


Talk to Me

by heartspocky



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Ableism references, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst and Humor, College boy soul-searching, Deaf Character, Eventual Smut, M/M, Minor Violence, Minor age difference, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 51,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartspocky/pseuds/heartspocky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Entering his senior year and getting fearfully close to graduation, the last thing Axel needs is to get caught up in some turbulent romance. Then comes Roxas, snarky, closed-off, and endlessly intriguing. But just as Axel's about to throw his "no dramatics" resolution out the window, he's hit with one little problem: he and Roxas just don't speak the same language. Literally. Now Axel has to figure out where his priorities stand, and how to deal with all of the nasty little repercussions that pop up along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introductions and Arguments

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on fanfiction.net. Minor edits.

It started out like any other Friday, really.

The sun poured through blinds too crunched and askew to keep out the morning. Despite this unpleasant intrusion from the gods of the AM, Axel dosed, blissfully unaware of his roommate’s stirrings-- the sound of the shower switching on, pipes protesting, then the clattering of the shower suddenly switching off a good fifteen minutes later, pipes still protesting. For the next five minutes, Axel would continue to sleep through the sound of books clattering and papers shuffling; then, finally, the door opening and gently clicking shut as the roommate left to start his day.

Like the previous Friday, Axel didn't rise for another hour to get to his own first class. When that was through, he had nothing more to do with his afternoon than to slog through three more courses on the longest day of his week. When he made his way back to his apartment in the evening he did as much studying as humanly possible on a grueling afternoon, although he didn’t even feel very productive in the first place. His roommate, of course, had returned and was diligently searching through his textbooks as Axel gave his usual advice:

“You need to get out, man.”

Axel's comments about how the poor guy needed to get out-slash-laid-slash-exposed to natural light were, as a rule, only ever half-serious.

Here's the thing: Axel’s last roommate had been a wannabe rocker who dropped out after only a few months into the year. And while, in theory, Axel had no objections to coming back from class to find a huge party had kicked off, the excess became exhausting after a while. So coming back home to find silence was a relief, screw being the “cool guy”. That title could go to someone who actually cared. Axel was beginning to kind of like the consistency, the reliability, and he was done with all that high school popularity contest bullshit anyhow.

The redheaded man’s valiant (read:half-assed) effort to sit his ass down and read on a Friday night were, without fail, crushed by his need to go out and do something. Or someone--that worked too. Maybe someday he'd be more passionate for sobriety, but just now wasn't the time.

After giving his roommate a wave destined to be ignored, Axel bolted out of the door and jumped into his dark red car. It was a beaten up, unreliable old piece of shit, but it got the job done when it actually felt like starting.

“C’mon,” Axel muttered, as if speaking nicely enough would motivate the car to sprout legs and rush him over to the club in a somewhat Transformers-like fashion. It turned on sputtering and creaking, and Axel, casting a glance over his shoulder for any oncoming traffic, sped into the night.

The curveball was thrown when Axel stepped inside the building. He just didn't know it yet.

He slinked casually into the little dive, his dark clothes and bright hair engulfed in a sea of dark clothes and bright hair ebbing and flowing in the dim light and loud music. He took a step back as the effect of it all hit him. Taking it in, Axel made his way past the dancers, lovers, and loiterers to the bar in the back. He ordered a single beer as always, debating on whether to mingle or sit back and watch the show.

“ID,” said the bartender, as he always did, a mixture of routine disinterest and a sort of, “prove-it-I-dare-you” look painted on his features. Axel flashed his driver’s license-- birthday August 13, 1987; 21 in the current year of 2008 thankyouverymuch-- paid, and began to drink, scanning the crowd for familiar faces.

His verdict: No one there, not really… just some vaguely fruity-but-tough pink-haired guy from his biology class chatting up a small blonde girl.

Just trying to prove something, Axel thought with a smirk, which dropped off his face in an instant. Okay, if someone were to go up and accuse him of being fruity yet oddly tough with something to prove… maybe he'd have to agree.

Letting the smile at his thoughts return, he leaned back, one leg casually resting over the other, elbows resting on the counter much to the displeasure of the bartender, and continued to scan. The tenseness in him slowly started to melt away. Yes, it was Friday, and yes, he was off the hook for two days. It was a good feeling.

Then, something monumental happened: the crowd seemed to part seamlessly for a moment, allowing Axel to lay his green eyes on a young man sitting at a table nearby. Excitement--finally. With a small, mischievous grin taking over his face, he strode over.

“Hi,” he said, looking the kid up and down. With light blue eyes, pale skin, and wild, sandy blond hair, he was oddly sweet-looking to be in a place like this—sure, it was by no means shady, but he looked so young, so serene in contrast to the drunken grinding going on all around him, it was like he had dropped in by accident. It was no wonder the kid was one of the few club-goers not nursing some sort of alcoholic beverage; he couldn’t have been older than nineteen. Actually, it was a wonder he was there in the first place, period.

He stared at the boy's face for a moment, watching for curious eyes searching the place for someone, but it seemed as though he was there by himself. Perfect; Axel was far from an angel, had certainly made bad decisions under the influence of alcohol and strobe lights in the past, but hitting on someone who was taken… no details, but that wasn't a mistake a smart man made twice. But between the strange combination of a youthful appearance and ill-humored expression, and possibility of meeting another gay single, Axel was officially intrigued. More than intrigued, actually: determined.

 “… Hi!” he said again. Nothing. The boy didn’t even look up. No big deal; the music was pretty loud, after all… maybe the kid just didn’t hear. Grinning, Axel leaned over and said, loudly but lightly, “Hey.”

Nothing. It was as if Axel wasn't even there.

Scowling, Axel spun on his heel and left. Odd. He wasn’t usually blown off like that… sure, he had traveled a long way from his high school "playboy" days, but this was still a pretty dramatic fall for him. Once he'd been the life of the party, the one you didn't turn down.

Well, there was a first time for everything, he supposed.

After this strange display (or lack thereof), Axel decided that maybe it was a sign for him to cut his losses and head home. Besides, at this time of night he could probably find a marathon of some dumb reality show on one of those various basic cable television channels supposedly dedicated to music. Arguably, not a bad way to spend the rest of the night. Dying brain cells be damned.

Once Axel returned to his apartment, oddly warm and heavy-feeling, the exhaustion seemed to set in all at once. At least his surroundings were quiet; his neighbors, too, were in for the night, and it was a relief that he could let himself into his room without stepping over passed-out frat boys every other foot. (Sophomore year had been a bit wild for everyone, and it'd been what inspired Axel to look for housing off-campus.)

The remainder of his weekend was the same all-too-brief blur of semi-mundane events as the weekend before that, and before that, and before that. He spent Saturday out with some buddies, did some work on his car to little avail, attempted to read through his textbooks, and went out with more friends-- maybe throwing in a meal or two there somewhere. Sunday was lazier, as all the man had to do was call his parents, which he tried to manage every week. The afternoon and evening were spent playing some mindless shoot-em-up games by himself. Fortunately (and unfortunately), he had no hours at work this week. He'd probably be paying for it later when his paycheck showed to be rather unsatisfactory, but for now he was just enjoying being able to slaughter zombies. If his roommate had been there at all, Axel had hardly registered it.

Monday was always a little more unpredictable; at least his morning class promised to deliver some entertainment. His professor was older, losing it a little, maybe, and always eccentric.

The small blond Axel recognized all too well in the seat in front of him didn't hurt matters either.

For a moment, Axel couldn’t quite believe his eyes. How had he not noticed this guy before? But there he was--same blue eyes, same blonde hair, same bored expression. Axel knew that if he wanted to press the matter further, now was his chance.

However, he also knew that he was a mature adult much too old to be playing these games, that this wasn't high school anymore, hadn't been for a long time, and he didn't need everyone to like him. He had to make a choice: act like the mature adult that he was, or stubbornly refuse to let the matter drop?

"Hey chatterbox, why were you ignoring me the other day?"

Okay, maybe he wasn't exactly one to just let things drop.

A few moments passed--still nothing. Now Axel was getting a little irritated. The silent treatment was bordering on bizarre.

"You know, at the club?"

Finally, Axel sat back, crossing his arms and sighing as a girl in orange took a seat next to the boy. No accounting for utter bastards, then. Really, he didn't even know why he was being so persistent in the first place-- especially for some little freshman who was showing himself to be a stuck-up little--

 "I saw you trying to talk to Roxas," said the girl in orange, turning to face Axel. "I just thought you should know that Roxas is deaf. So if you want to try and talk to him, you might want to rethink your method of conversation."

"…Oh."

Well, that could be a problem, then. Instantly sheepish, Axel offered an awkward apology to the girl.

It should have occurred to him, honestly. He knew going in that Twilight Town's university had a significant Deaf population and why he didn't even consider that as a possibility was a mystery even to Axel. Of course, they seemed to stay so locked in their cliques-in-cliques-in-cliques that Axel had never even seen one, let alone talked to one. Or... tried to, at least.

"...it's okay!"

"Huh?"

"Roxas says it's okay," the girl repeated, turning back to him for a moment. Roxas and Olette communicated once more, quickly and swiftly, and then she turned back. "He says he tends to tune people out anyway. He says he was really lost in thought and wasn't paying attention."

"It's cool. Seriously, just tell him it's fine."

"You know, if you just look at him when you speak he‘ll probably be able to pick up some of what you're saying," she advised cheerfully as the blond boy turned to face Axel, too.

"…Ah." And so he did, turning to look Roxas in the eye and get out the one, simple sentence he'd been trying to since Saturday night. "You're pretty cute."

Roxas said something to the girl, a sudden flurry of hands and amused expressions, before the girl finally responded.

"He said thanks," she said flatly, probably conveying the way the message was given to her. Case in point: Roxas was rolling his eyes.

"It's...uh, it's true," the man insisted weakly, the muttered words not completely meant to be heard. Or seen, as it was. He decided to lay low for the rest of the period, regardless.

 

Axel didn't see Roxas or his friend for the remainder of the week, and that was a fact he didn't really have the time to dwell on. Despite his wild looks and party streak, Axel was smart, and his loyalties sided with work before play. And though Roxas certainly seemed like a piece of work, that wasn’t quite what he had in mind.

"So yeah, I'm Axel," said man finally told them their next class together. He did sit by them almost every Monday, after all; there was no reason not to exchange pleasantries every once in a while.

And, he wouldn't admit it, but he was slightly obsessed with the idea of getting to know this kid.  

"Roxas, as you already know," the girl said, the whole "you're cute" incident seemingly forgotten for the moment. "And I'm Olette, thanks for asking." Axel grinned, raring for an apology that didn't seem completely necessary judging from her smile, but before he could so much as open his mouth, she quickly changed topics. "And just so you know, you don't have to talk so slow to him. It actually makes it harder for Roxas to understand you."

"Yeah, sorry about that. It's nice to meet you both."

"Not a problem." Olette and Roxas signed back and forth for a brief moment. By the end of their private conversation, her face had fallen and the blond's face became home to a mischievous smile. "So, yeah. Roxas says that 'Axel' is a stupid name."

Axel raised his eyebrows, not even wanting to know where that came from.

"…And this is coming from Roxas? Man, that is about one step down from 'Galadriel'." Signing between Olette and Roxas before Olette turned to Axel once again.

"Roxas called you a jerkass."

"Hey, he's the one who attacked me, all right? You attacked me first, kiddo."

A deep sigh. "This isn't going well…"

"Then tell him to lay off!"

"No, no, that was me talking, not him."

"Oh, okay." Axel paused. "Well, tell him anyway."

Olette shook her head with a sigh, grateful when the professor finally started her lecture.

 

The second week of the boys' sudden discovery of one another resulted in no contact whatsoever, as Axel arrived a few milliseconds late and couldn't get to his normal seat. Such was the disadvantage of an eighty-student class. That being said, the third week went about as smoothly as the first.

"Roxas is asking for you to move your head, he can't see," Olette whispered to the redhead, leaning at an uncomfortable 45-degree angle to reach his ear.

"Sorry."

A beat.

"He says it's your big, stupid hair. Sorry."

"Do you really have to tell me all that stuff verbatim?" Axel asked finally, partially annoyed yet, somehow, amused all the same. The sole week of peace that had occurred earlier had healed some of the aggravation-wounds caused by stuck-up blonds who have problems with people's names and compliments. "Can't you censor it for the sake of my poor feelings?"

"Roxas just… really likes getting his point across," Olette explained with a shrug. "It’s what he said, I can't change that."

"Tell him that this is just how my hair is and he can either deal with it or sit in the front row."

Olette delivered the message, Roxas rolled his eyes, and Axel sighed, a loud puff of air that earned glares from the people sitting next to him.

Psh. Freshmen.

Oddly, as class let out the third week, Olette tracked Axel down just before he could leave the room. "Roxas said your hair was being distracting again. Also--"

Axel had woken up that morning half an hour late. He’d thrashed out of bed in a panic, dressing as quickly as possible, and he couldn't even remember if he had ended up with the time to brush his teeth. As he ran to his car, he nearly got hit by some prick who was already drunk at ten in the morning and decided that constantly swerving onto sidewalks spells out, "fun time". After all that chaos, his car wouldn't even start up. Ten minutes later, he finally got it working and by that time, of course, his parking spot had been taken. And he really, really, really meant to take a seat farther away from the blond demon and his friend, but the seat right in front of the kid was the only one left because he hadn't been able to get there early enough.

Axel was not in the mood for this.

"Look," he spat. "If Roxas has such a problem with who sits in front of him, he should sit in the front row and leave me alone. I haven't even done anything to the kid. If I knew he was going to get into a big tizzy over me calling him cute, I wouldn't have said it, got it memorized?"

"…I was going to say that I think Roxas just has a little crush-thing on you."

That was unexpected. Sour mood replaced by shock, all Axel could manage was a brief, "What now?"

"Yeah," she continued. "I mean, he hasn't exactly said anything about it or anything, but he keeps talking about you."

"He does?” he asked in disbelief, one eyebrow cocked. "This is kinda sudden. You're really sure?"

"…Well, he keeps talking about how stupid you are."

Axel didn't buy it. To play little-obnoxious-bully to someone you hardly knew because you liked him seemed… oddly second grade. Well, on second though, he did think Roxas looked rather young…

"Right," he said, finally. "And how, exactly, does this translate to 'madly in love'?"

Olette's tentative smile broke out into an all-out grin, her shoulders shaking as she laughed her infectious laugh. Axel smiled too.

"Well, I only said 'crush thing'. It's just the impression I get when he talks about you. See, usually if he doesn't like someone or there's something upsetting him, he won't talk about it. At least, he won't really talk about it. I could totally be off about all this but… I get rants about you."

She laughed again, but Axel didn't register it, already mulling over every word she had said. He didn't even realize that he was wearing a giant grin until, speak of the devil--apt as a cliche can be-- Roxas walked by, grabbing Olette's arm and giving her a gentle tug. He caught a full glimpse of Axel's unconscious grin-face and frowned, causing the older man to do so as well.

Madly in love, crush-thing, whatever. Neither were looking like even a slight possibility if Roxas's face in that brief moment were any indication of his attitude toward the redhead.

 

The following week brought much of the same. Axel was sure to switch his alarm on every night to avoid the mad rush that he always tried so hard to avoid. He arrived extra early to Lit just to make sure he could secure a seat closer to the back, so his hair couldn't cause any distress to certain easily-distressed classmates. And if he were anywhere near the two, he would say a simple hey, and that was the end of it. This was his senior year of college; he wasn't going to go out looking to involve himself in dramatics. He was going to have as much fun and success as possible before the stress of exams and being suddenly thrust into the real world took its toll. No one was going to change that for him. No one.

Still, Axel found himself waiting for the blond and his friend after class let out that day. To apologize, maybe, or to set things right. Axel had visibly cringed the first time he realized that he and Roxas had pretty consistently argued over every little thing since they met, Axel needling Roxas until the boy said something rude and defensive, Roxas saying something goading out of self-defense, until it became a big, endless spiral of childish bickering. That couldn't be denied. And that Olette was always stuck right in the middle of it was unacceptable.

Really, he hadn't set out to make any enemies. Sometimes he just took a joke too far, and he knew he had completely disregarded the younger boy's unmistakable "keep away-- caution" vibe. And just avoiding the situation wasn't going to make things any better; eventually, he would be stuck in front of Roxas again, or he'd see him out in the quad, or they'd get another class together. He might as well nip the problem in the bud before it resulted in too much idiocy from either party. If he simply stopped playing around with Roxas, the man might never know that he really didn't have any bad intentions-- or intentions, period.

But then, maybe it was something else, too, that caused Axel to feel the need to apologize; maybe it was that he started noticing how Roxas walked with a casual slouch, making him seem even tinier than he was, how he always struggled to understand what the professor was saying from the his usual seat in the auditorium, how he left the second class ended, how the only person he had seen the boy with was Olette. Sure, the whole deafness thing was probably a factor in this, but he seemed like he wouldn't go up and talk to anyone even if he could.

While Axel himself couldn't exactly be called a social butterfly, the avoidant behavior struck him as odd, the kind of shrinking violet mentality that usually fades once adulthood rears its newly-attractive head. For the first time in his life, whenever he was around the kid he felt as though he needed to aid him in some way-- take him under his wing, show him the ropes, and various other figures of speech.

Of course, it was also possible that he was just more emotionally invested in this kid than he had any right to be.

Either way, he was going to stay outside the door after class ended to catch Roxas, even if it meant having to wait for every last student to leave, scanning them each individually for that one familiar face. And so he did, until the point that the rush crowd had left and only those few drifters who probably had no place to be for the rest of the day remained. There it became apparent that Axel, somehow,  wasn't going to catch him. He frowned as the last of his classmates made their way out, no blonds to be found.

Maybe he hadn't been looking down far enough.

As casually as possible, he leaned over to sneak a glance into the room just to be completely sure.  
Empty. Axel wasn't even quite sure why he waited in the first place-- he saw the boy enough during the week. Apologies could be made during that time. Or he could just leave the situation alone. With a thoughtful scowl, Axel crossed his arms and turned to leave.

"Holy shit!" …Not expecting a short brunette to so suddenly materialize right in front of him. "You scared the hell outta me! What's up?" Olette apologized, taking a step back. Her yellow laptop bag slipped from its place on her shoulder as she did so, multitudes of bright keychains slapping together as she slid it back into place.

"You like Roxas, don't you?" she asked, apparently unafraid of getting to the point. Probably from extended periods of time translating for Roxas. To this, Axel was unsure how to respond; the question was unexpected, to say the least.

"I've only talked to the guy like, twice."

"I didn't ask if you were going to marry him! I'm just asking… is there really some actual interest in him somewhere?"

"Uh… oh, wow. I don't know." Finally, he settled with, "Yeah, I guess."

If he hadn't, then why wait for the boy to apologize to him? Why wait to get him alone? What was the point of getting so enthusiastic over the prospect of Roxas having a 'crush-thing' on him, the few times he reflected on it? That had to equal interest, even if Axel wasn't quite sure what kind of interest it was. At this, the girl frowned and Axel once again found himself unsure of the right thing to say, or what, exactly, he had just gotten himself into. And Olette was still frowning, brows furrowed in thought. This wasn't a good sign, not from someone who was so upbeat. "What?"

"Nothing, it’s just--"

"Did Roxas ask? Did he finally say something?" Aside from how stupid he thinks I am? He almost wanted to add, even if it just meant making the girl laugh. Her stern face was honestly beginning to unnerve him.

"No," Olette responded right away. Oddly-- even to him-- Axel's face fell.

"Ah."

"To be honest, Roxas doesn't exactly know I'm here." Her face twisted a little. "Actually, he’d kill me if he knew. I just wanted to let you know before you put any sort of investment into him, that Roxas isn't going to be some quick boink." At these words, these implications, no-- accusations, Axel scowled, brows drawn together tightly, green eyes narrowed, arms crossed once again. "He's way too serious for that stuff."

"I'm not looking for a quick boink!" Axel shouted. His outburst caused a group of students passing by to stare, eyes wide, as if they were witnessing a big scandal that would make for a good story. Rapidly, and with much more gusto than he truly felt, he turned to the pod and exclaimed, "That's right, I said 'quick boink'!" They hurried away.

Freshmen.

"I'm not looking for anything," he finished calmly.  "It's that… I guess I just thought he's cute and interesting, you know? No big deal." After a moment with no response he grinned gently. "Nothing icky."

Instantly the girl's face lightened, relief almost painfully evident. "Okay. Just wanted to be extra sure."

"…Why?" Axel asked, very unsure.

"Because relationships like that tend to not last very long." For the first time, her face darkened, smile completely vanished. "Especially with people like you two. And the stuff Roxas has been through? I won't go into detail for his sake, but we're sick of his relationships falling apart after a month."

"Um… I'm sorry," was the only reply Axel could think of. He had definitely not been expecting this. Olette shrugged once more before turning to leave. "Hey, wait."

"Hm?"

"What do you mean, 'relationships like that'? You mean…"

"Deaf and hearing?" she finished. "Well, yeah. Sometimes. You get together not really knowing each other and already there’s this huge difference between the two of you. And then… Roxas is just so serious…"

Right. So the real reasoning came out.

"And you think I'm just going to play him."

"I'm sure you really are a great guy, Axel." She placed one foot out in front of her, ready to turn away.

"I hardly even know him!"

"Of course," she replied after much too long of a pause. "He really needs someone who understands him. That's all." A shrill sound suddenly rang through the air, causing both of them to jump. "Sorry, that would be my cell." She pulled the thin phone from her pocket-- orange, of course-- and answered instantly. "Pence? Yeah, I'll be there in just a sec." As if noticing him for the first time, she turned back to Axel and said, "I gotta go."

"All right."

She was already halfway down the hall when Axel called to her one last time. "Hold on."

"Huh?"

"Can you just tell me something about him? Anything." I am so lost was the amendment he nearly tacked on, but he changed his mind at the last moment. He let the words, those nasty implications, stand on their own. He didn't care if he was contradicting himself anymore.

"He's a Pisces," she responded finally, swiftly turning on her heel and moving to the door.  
   
"That was helpful," Axel murmured to an empty hall, turning his own way and heading on home.

He still just wanted to know what he had just gotten himself into with one simple, "hey".


	2. Accusations and Assumptions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Axel is forced to take initiative when Olette gives him an ultimatum.

Axel lay in bed for two hours Sunday night, unable to get to sleep. It was well past midnight, last time he looked at the clock resting on the bedside table. The red _12:34_   searing in the darkness was just a cruel reminder that, yeah, he was still up. Maybe it'd been that last hour of reading he'd decided to put in, that took his sleepiness away.

He didn't even know why he worked himself so hard, payoff or no. He felt so serious compared to his peers all the sudden; four years had changed him so much he could hardly recognize himself. And he didn't know quite yet if it was for the best or not. Sure, the change may not have been visible outwardly, but he felt it. _It's probably for the best anyway,_ he reasoned. _I'm twenty-one. Going into the real world and all._ He sighed; yeah, right. He didn't even know what he was going to do when the year was over. Not like he could work at a gaming store for the rest of his life.

All this thinking about being serious made him think of Roxas.

Or maybe thinking of Roxas made him think about being serious.

He still couldn't shake what Olette had said to him the previous week: _And the stuff Roxas has been through? I won't go into detail for his sake, but we're sick of his relationships falling apart after a month._

Or how about: _Relationships like yours tend to not last very long._ The horrible assumption that Axel was in it for something, and that Roxas was hurting, and they wouldn't mix. What the hell was that all about? What difference did it make if he could hear and the kid couldn't? Sighing loudly, Axel turned on his side and threw the plush covers over his head, cool from the night air flowing through the open window. After a few moments under the comforter, Axel surfaced once more for fresh air. He untangled the sheets wrapped around his legs from so many minutes of tossing and turning. He sat up. Then he sat down again. A stray moonbeam fell across his face, exaggerating bright green eyes and milky skin, a hint of matching tattoos, like an inverted censor bar in the darkness.

Axel really needed some new blinds.

He turned over once more, sliding a slender arm under his pillow to get a brief feel of the cold side, remaining that way until shifting his head started making him feel pins and needles coursing through his fingers.

Roxas was snotty, but that could be changed. He liked Axel… supposedly. But he'd been through a lot, apparently. What did that mean?

Been through a lot.  
  
Been… through a lot.

Been. Through. A lot.

Maybe he was abused or something-- Axel considered this, but the idea seemed odd to him. Foreign, even. Perhaps he just wasn't very good at the whole 'living like the other half' stuff, because he couldn't really imagine Roxas’s upbringing too different from his own, for the most part. Nuclear family. Friends and school and work. Birthdays and holidays. Anything else was unfamiliar territory. Or maybe the idea didn't seem to mesh with him because Roxas didn't seem like that… type? But then, he didn't know that the guy was deaf and wasn't deaf a type? But then, Axel wasn't psychic, he didn't have the knowledge to go around making sweeping generalizations about everyone in the world. He didn't care to, really.

After all, it was just a possibility. A month would pass, and they'd probably forget that the other even existed in the first place.

 

 

"You need me to move my head again," Axel stated good-naturedly the next morning as Olette once again tapped his shoulder. Really, he had no excuse to be feeling this chipper while running on four hours of sleep.

"Sorry," the girl whispered. Axel simply waved her off, shifting slightly so the short boy could get a better view.

"That better?"

"Perfect!"

Every once in a while, Axel would glance behind him; more often than not, Roxas was looking back. It was more than a little conspicuous. Maybe the girl wasn't so far off after all, and Axel found the idea exciting, intriguing, and horrifying all at once. As he recorded notes and fought off the sleepiness that was just beginning to creep in, Axel smiled. This could actually be doable.

By the time class let out, however, the man crashed. Figuratively, of course, but also literally-- right into Roxas.

"Christ, kid. I didn't even see you down--- ah, shit." Great, first smacking right into the guy, then feebly trying to talk to him about it. Two wonderful ways to look like a douchebag, right there. But then, Roxas could read lips. Maybe there was a chance he’d caught it all.

Why didn't Olette ever suddenly materialize when she was actually needed?

"Sorry," Axel said again, allowing the time for Roxas to get back up and look at him before speaking. He didn’t know what else to do. "Wow, my bag really got you good there." He winced at the look of the ugly bruise beginning to form on the poor guy's cheek, right under the left eye.  "...Whoops." Roxas lightly touched the spot, frowning. Not wanting to hesitate anymore, Axel reached out. "Hey...?" But Roxas evaded the touch as if nothing had happened in the first place. In fact, Axel would have thought Roxas had ignored him altogether if he hadn't made the point of avoiding another attempted touch, shoving past him and signing something impossible to decode. Still, the message rang loud and clear: back off.

 

The day’s incident was still vaguely playing through his mind in the evening when Axel ran into Olette at a small convenience store just off the campus.

"Tell Roxas I'm sorry, would you?" he asked. "He's pissed at me."

"What did you do?" The girl asked, irritation clear in her voice. Okay, Olette was obviously not a late-night kind of person.

"Bitch-smacked him with my laptop case. Total accident."

"Okay. And, hey, just so you know…" she gently pressed a fist to her chest and rubbed it in small circles. “That means ‘sorry’. Might come in handy for you.” Despite her well-meaning words, he could tell that there was something off, the cheer she feigned as she waved goodbye was, well... That. Feigned, and obviously so. Maybe someone slipped powdered ill-humor into that pink aluminum water bottle she was constantly carrying around. Or perhaps accidentally hitting a deaf person was some sort of very specific crime against humanity that he was entirely unaware of.

Axel shook his head as he dug through his pockets for enough spare change for a fresh bag of bagels. As if needing a translator just to talk to some underclassman he happened to find cute wasn't weird enough, now everyone in the world aside from him was suffering from some sort of PMS. Maybe he just needed to distance himself from these odd people for a while.

Yeah, that sounded good.

Apparently, Axel's subconscious disagreed that decision. He wasn't entirely sure just what he dreamt of the night before, and trying to recall as he sat in the kitchenette and ate his bagel for breakfast yielded no real results. As he flipped through the channels, an occasional commercial spot would cause him to briefly remember a tiny fragment of a dream that had faded soon after he woke. All he knew was that he just couldn't get Roxas out of his head, since the moment he woke up. He was seriously beginning to reconsider his old, reliable "no freaks" policy.   _But what am I talking about?_ Axel thought, climbing into his poor excuse for a car. _He obviously wants me to back off. This isn't second grade, if he's got a little crush on me he should just come out and say so._

But first, he should probably find out how old the kid was. Everything would have to stop if he turned out to be some sort of child prodigy, only sixteen or seventeen, like his roommate. There were so many lines he wouldn't cross there it almost made him dizzy.

It had been two months since they met at the bar, since Axel had fallen into lust at first sight. But somehow, out of all of this, two years of questions floated through his head. Most prominently among them: why?

Why couldn't he get that dumb, cute--not even hot but cute-- little kid out of his head?

Olette planted the idea, he decided finally. Or maybe he just hadn't gotten over the boy's looks, maybe he was intrigued by all those strange things about him, that aura or whatever.

 _Okay_ , he thought, starting his car, the engine still not quite wanting to switch on. _So I need to get over the fact I like him. Or want him, or whatever._

And that was that.

Suddenly, Tuesdays through Fridays seemed boring after the chaos the two boys wrought throughout Literature. Funny that the ever-dreaded Monday would become his favorite day of the week-- and the most infuriating, of course, for all parties.

It didn't take Olette much longer to snap, and Axel wasn't particularly surprised when it happened--just how it actually went down. After one last flustering week of "your hair is too big" arguments, plus Roxas's continuing spite from being knocked over, and just about everything else that had happened since they met, the comment about the guy being cute… Olette's moodiness a few days prior… no, this didn't surprise Axel a bit. She pulled both him and Roxas aside as they began to file out of class.

"Listen, you two," she said. "Ro-- hey, where are you going, Roxas? Boo hoo! You can too understand me." With this, she began signing as she spoke, with such grace and fluidity it was as though she had been doing this her whole life. "You know I have no problem translating for you guys. Honestly, it's the most fun I have all week. But guys, if I have to get involved of one more of your stupid arguments, I don't know what I'm going to do. Okay?" As she halted speaking, she turned to Roxas. Whatever she said to him from then made the blonde blush red and storm out. Roxas could make a lot of noise when he wanted to, Axel noted, taken slightly aback. He just wished he could have figured out what she had said to him.

"Axel," she concluded, and Axel was surprised to find that he had actually shrunk back a bit. What could he say? It had been a long time since a girl had chewed him out over anything, a fact he was endlessly thankful for. "You want to talk to Roxas so badly? You think he's so cute? Learn sign. Because I'm just about done." And with that, her sudden burst of anger seemed to subside. As breezy as ever, she knelt to pick up her bag and left, the sound of charms clacking together like plastic wind chimes. Or mini battle drums. "See you next Monday, Axel. Take care." She waved without turning around.

"Sure thing," he replied, but she had already gone.

Learn sign… okay, fine. Adult or no, Axel was never one to turn down a challenge; and there was no doubt that this was a challenge. He was _going_ to learn sign. If it killed him, he would learn sign. They had evolved long past two strangers with varying levels of interest for all kinds of different reasons. They had mutual feelings for each other; this Axel, with a hint of hesitance, accepted. He also knew that just going up to the kid and asking him out wasn’t going to result in anything good. For the first time in his life, Axel was going to have to work for this.

That thought didn’t send him down a good path. Damn, he missed being just another jerkass _guy_. Someone who could tote around some piece of arm candy for a few months to show everyone just how cool he was, fuck the guy, and go find someone new.

But something in him changed when he turned nineteen. He couldn’t explain it. And it made him feel a self-indulgent sense of shame, how easily he could be manipulated into hurting other people just to feel worthy. Though the feeling gnawed at the pit at his stomach once or twice before, being with Roxas week in and week out made the ideas come to a true, full, shameful light.

He’d made fun of kids like Roxas-- and now he wanted to be with one?

But, he realized, that mindset disregarded the fact that Roxas was a jerk, too. He couldn’t take the opposite route, either, couldn’t keep jumping to extremes: he couldn’t make an unwilling victim out of the kid. He couldn’t try to help anyone with anything, really. A therapist Axel was most certainly not.

Philosophical musings aside, Axel went to bed at least satisfied that he had some sort of plan to act upon. He could just envision it. Someday soon, he would strut in, sit down next to Roxas and talk to him. Axel would talk to him so hard Roxas wouldn’t know what hit him.

Just not with a laptop case this time.

Unfortunately, life once again got in the way of budding love. At least he was finally getting some hours at work; he seemed to be in shift purgatory for a while, but at least now he'd be earning some cash, and God knows he could use it. Any spare time he had was spent working on his car. Therein lies the paradox; if he works, he earns money which he can use to fix his car. But if he's working, he can't spend as much time fixing his car as necessary. And of course, the classic amongst most young people with a license: No car, no job. No job, no car.

And at least he still got to sleep in, even if he noticed that it was getting harder to fall and stay asleep; stress, he figured. It was his senior year of college and he still wasn't totally sure what he wanted to do with his life. His declared major really wasn’t cutting it for him anymore. He had work and school and family and friends. Lack of sleep was inevitable.

One workless weekend, however, he made a step forward.

Axel even surprised himself. Typically he would find himself guilty of picking up a project only to drop it soon after he deemed it too hard or a waste of time—who hadn’t?—and unless it was vital, like the fact that now his stupid old car’s damn A/C had completely broken, it ended up on that long, abstract list of not-so-important things to be done at an indeterminate time. But he searched through the foreign language section of the book store—the good one across the freeway, not the under-stocked outlet in walking distance from his apartment, Axel was pulling out all stops here—and, after much mental debating, finally decided to shell out the $35.95 he technically didn’t have at the moment to get himself a decent high-school level ASL textbook.

Promptly the text became a paperweight. As classes picked up, the idea of forcing himself to learn a new language became daunting. Much to the dismay of Olette and her poor sanity, this was something that would have to wait. Besides, if he went to all this trouble and Roxas really did just think he was an obnoxious jerk… well, he wasn’t quite ready for another rejection from the blond. Not after all the time and money that it would cost him in the long run, all in the name of a relationship that may never even be so much as an insignificant one-night fling.

Sorry Olette--mission not accepted.

Still, it wasn’t that Axel’s interest in the boy had dwindled. His thoughts often trailed to situations implying the complete opposite, in fact; of talking to Roxas and of change for the best for once… But he simply couldn’t blow off all his work to chase tail anymore. And that was the bottom line. He had so much on his plate, school would be winding down before he knew it and he still didn’t know what to do with himself, he still hadn’t figured out who he was... but the thing was, he couldn’t get the kid out of his mind anymore. Bringing that text home was like bringing home some cursed artifact, bringing obsession rather than misfortune the moment purchased. Every time he saw it, it served as a reminder that he had dropped yet another project, he had given up for the thousandth time, gotten distracted again, and that he was completely, totally, and irrevocably smitten with this obnoxious blond boy who couldn’t even speak his language literally, metaphorically, or whatever.

“Fuck off,” he murmured one day as he came home from school, throwing his backpack on the ground and glaring daggers at the book on the counter.

“Excuse me?” His roommate asked, looking up from his own work for the first time since Axel walked in the door.

“Not you. I was talking to the… never mind.”

Axel shook his head and walked past the counter. As he stepped into his room--only one foot in the doorway, hand hovering over the light switch-- he stopped. Everything stopped. At some point his hand dropped back to his side and he stepped back, but Axel never registered nor could recall it.

He had no classes Thursday. This lightened his workload for the week considerably, he had an essay due in two weeks that he could afford to put off… the look on Roxas’s face when he turned and apologized for himself the next time the little snot told him to move his big head would be amazing… the blue eyes wide,  the wild blond hair that caught his eye in the first place, maybe just actually getting a smile for once…

It made no sense. He saw the boy twice a week; he only sat near him once a week. He had never talked to him.

And he was smitten.

And he had to admit, he hated himself for it.

Sighing, Axel made his way back into the small kitchen and grabbed the textbook. He held it in his hands for a moment, slightly overwhelmed and full of dread, but with a dull sense of excitement beginning to surface, too. His feelings had never been so mixed about anything. _A lot of work to go to for a cute kid_ , he thought one last time before heading back to his room. Halfway there, he was stopped.

“That was yours?” his roommate asked casually, glancing up to look at him for a moment before fixating on his laptop again.

“Yeah.” Axel waited for the man to speak again, but he didn’t make another peep. The only sound that came from that side of the room at all was the small taps of rapid fire typing. Axel turned to leave when the typing came to a stop.

“That’s cool,” came the quiet voice again. Then, after a brief hesitation, “my father was deaf.”

At this revelation, Axel was at a loss for words. He and his roommate didn’t talk. They didn’t _not_ get along by any means, but neither did they ever have an actual conversation. A few “how was your day”s here and there were common at the beginning, until they realized they were too different to be friends, and that was fine. This kind of thing simply did not happen. They did not confide in one another. He _had_ known, though, however vaguely, that the kid had been pretty much on his own since fifteen; dead dad, no sign of any mother anywhere, but it wasn’t something he brought up much, for obvious reasons. If he was recalling correctly, it was a mutual acquaintance who had told him, not the boy himself.

“…Oh.”  Axel was unsure how to respond, his typical ’hey, cool’ rendered pretty damn inappropriate. “Um. Yeah. Just…yeah, you know. Right?”

Graciously, Axel's roommate simply hummed in agreement to the unintelligible babbling. “Maybe you could give me some pointers then sometime. Let me know if I ever start to go horribly wrong.” From where he was standing, Axel could just barely see the corners of Zexion’s mouth pull into a small smile. It was the first Axel had ever seen from him.

 

Thursday was a study day.

Of course, it could have been a study day for actual classes with grades, but hell, Axel was so goddamn sick of his life revolving around school, it was time to fixate on something else for a while. He dove right in to the text, relieved to see that the language, at first glance, seemed simple enough. The pictures on the pages were a little hard to decipher at times, but the syntax he could get. It was like Spanish, or French-- both languages he had attempted during high school and hadn’t quite picked up, to put it kindly, but the subject-adjective-verb lectures were engrained in his mind for all eternity.  
  
He felt oddly foolish making hand motions to a book, alone. That was the first thing he had to get over. He couldn’t figure out how one sign could encompass a three or four word thought (“how are you”) or one complicated sign could be a single word ("Lamp". It used two hands and looked like an effing mushroom, and he couldn‘t figure out why those two phrases were in the same chapter anyway) There were no conjunctions and that blew his mind for a while. Sure, it made sense when he thought about it. If you wanted to actually get a point across in a time period of less than a year, it was best to cut out all the extraneous stuff, but mentally speaking out sentences lacking even a single “is” or “to” sounded Neanderthal to his English-trained ears. He wondered if Roxas ever thought he was surrounded by idiots who couldn’t get to the point.

The next time Axel glanced over at the clock, it was nine.

“Shit,” Axel said, rubbing his eyes. “I’ve been doing this all night.” He paused, briefly wondering if Zexion heard him talking to himself and would think he’d snapped.

Nothing.

Good. Axel sighed loudly and flopped down on the carpeted floor, throwing an arm over his eyes. He got the alphabet pretty much down. He was fairly sure he had already learned it when he was young, so it wasn’t too much trouble to rememorize. He thought he had greetings down fine. And who, what, where, when. General things. He could probably manage a couple of sentences if he had his book on hand, because there was no way he had gotten all of those household objects down. Except for the stupid mushroom lamp.

But it was enough. For now, he didn’t need much more. He had Lit with Roxas again Monday; he didn’t work Sunday, he could probably study more then. But for now, all he could do was wait until they met again and hope for the best.

On Friday, Axel decided that he was madly in love with his roommate, who was the most wonderful person in the world. He opened up his email to sift through the normal junk--a reminder from a teacher stating that a test date had been pushed forward, an acquaintance asking everyone on their contact list to bring canned foods and old clothes the following week for a charity drive, campus newsletters he never read… if he wasn‘t the most active, social student on campus, he certainly didn’t mind-- but one message in particular caught his eye. Shifting his weight, Axel clicked on the highlighted message in his inbox.

“Okay,” he mumbled to himself. “What couldn’t you just tell me face to face?” He hummed noncommittally as the message loaded. No message, no subject, just a link. He clicked it without even thinking. He doubted his roommate would send him a virus, although he wouldn’t put him past the kid. It’s always the quiet ones, after all. And it would be a virus Zexion had cooked up himself earlier in the week, at that.

Axel rolled his eyes at himself as the page loaded. Another point for his to-do list: fix car. Get new blinds. And defrag computer; back up files just in case.

Win Roxas over. Number one.

After what seemed like hours (a minute and twelve seconds) the full page loaded. Axel grinned, leaned back in his chair and shouted, “Thanks, man!” Why didn’t I think of this before? Axel mused. Of course everything he needed would be online. Why stress over some poorly drawn step-by-step pictures when he could just download videos of the actual signs in action? And now he wouldn’t have to badger Zexion every few minutes to make sure that he wasn’t messing anything up horribly. Which was probably Zexion’s point in sending him that in the first place, but hey, Axel could pretend it was just out of the goodness of his little heart.

When he went into class on Monday, he would show Olette that he had no intentions to do anything _to_ or _with_ Roxas. He’d get rid of those implications.

And he would show Roxas that nothing said they couldn’t be together.


	3. Carpooling and Catcalling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Progress is made when Axel and Roxas finally get some alone time.

In his entire life, Axel had never wanted Monday to come so badly. He had been a bit on the antsy side all morning, springing out of bed and rapidly dressing before his alarm even went off. Somehow he'd ended up so ahead of schedule that he had to calm himself down in order to just sit, relax, and eat his bagels. He didn't know how else to kill so much time, so he absently began to map out what he was going to say, how to come off as effortless.

Fortunately, this was a skill of his. Coming off as effortless  was never a difficult task for him because, well, everything he did was effortless. _Un_ fortunately, he was actually excited about this- _excited_. It had been a long time since he'd actually been looking forward to the prospect of a new relationship. _Whether friendship or more_ , Axel constantly had to tack on to his embarrassingly-detailed thoughts. He didn't want to get ahead of himself, really. After all, there was always the prospect that Roxas was just a jerkass.

Axel briefly tried to recall the bookstore's return policy as it finally came time for him to load up his car and head out. Just in case; he could use the $34.95, after all.

He got to class just early enough to scout out his usual spot. Roxas and Olette were already there. Perfect. But then, they always seemed to beat him to class. He clutched his sign language text, post-it tabs sticking out-just in case—and casually sat, dropping his bag on the ground and setting his book on the table. Olette was talking to someone else, giving him the perfect opening to tap the blond boy on the shoulder. Roxas glanced over, looking as generally unimpressed as usual, but at least appearing ready to listen. Or watch, really, Axel supposed.

"Hi," Axel said outloud with a small wave. Roxas simply nodded in acknowledgement. " _How's it going_?"

There. That got his attention. He glanced back at Olette, who was still occupied with the girl next to her, then turned to face Axel again, rolling his eyes with a half-smile on his face, like he couldn't believe what he was about to do.

" _Were you-"_ something something something. _"I thought-"_ something.

Shit.

"… _Sorry. I'm learning. I want to talk to you."_ A slight look of irritation made itself evident across the blond's face. He slowed.

" _What-do-you-want-from-me?"_

Axel couldn't come up with a way to say _nothing_ , to just say, _okay, I get it. Stop._ or to even verbalize or understand why this was so important to him in the first place.

So he signed, " _No_ ," mouthed "nothing" and hoped that would suffice. " _I want to be friends…?"_

" _Why?"_

"… _Why?"_   He could only repeat. Again he found his lack of fluency in the language creating an annoying barrier between them. He wanted to be able to speak in Roxas's language, didn't want to make him work to understand his mouth movements. After a moment's pause Roxas began to fingerspell the word, and Axel struggled to simply get out a noticeable, " _yeah_ , _I know"_ so that at least the boy wouldn't think he was a total idiot. Just a partial idiot.

" _It's going to be hard. It would be hard for both of us to be friends."_

" _Why?"_ Axel asked again, but Roxas was already looking forward, past him, at the professor just beginning to speak.

Fuck.

As he left that morning, Axel was kicking himself, wishing he could do the whole conversation over again. Wished he was fluent enough to avoid sounding about as eloquent as a four year old with a mouth full of peanut butter. He'd been fortunate enough to catch up with Roxas as he left, but the conversation didn't fare much better and Axel only found himself apologizing for things he didn't even know he had done.

Mission failed.

Once again, however, Olette seemed to the bearer of maybe-good-maybe-bad-but-overall-confusing news. He ran into her in the convenience store just off campus, searching the freezers full of soft drinks, and appearing lost in thought. Axel stood next to her for several minutes in silence, shifting slightly on his feet and waiting for her to notice his existence. Nope, nothing. She was too engrossed in picking up energy drinks, reading the labels, and putting them back. He waited for a moment longer before speaking up.

"No, no, not that one, you'll crash in an hour. Got it memorized?"

Olette jumped; the drink slipped from her fingers and hit the linoleum with a clang. They both winced and Olette leaned down to pick it up as Axel apologized. "That joke didn't have a happy ending. Sorry about that."

"It's fine. How long were you standing there?"

Axel shrugged. "Not very long." He watched her examine the dent on the side of the can caused by the fall before shoving it to the back of the shelf. "Ick. Hide that monstrosity in the back."

She laughed, shoving the can somewhere in the back of the fridge. "My thoughts exactly." She turned to him finally, sensing there was something on his mind. "So what's up, how've you been?"

"Oh," Axel said, as though he weren't expecting her to ask. "Yeah, fine. You know." There was a brief, awkward silence.

"So… I understand you talked to Roxas today."

"He tell you about that?"

Olette gave a short nod as she finally decided on a drink, shutting the freezer door and thankfully cutting the flow of cold air that was beginning to surround them. "We're both really impressed!"

"…Really." Axel crossed his arms, leaning against the door until the coolness seeping through his clothes began to bother him. Axel couldn't stand the cold.

"What, you don't believe me?" For the first time that evening their eyes met, hers dancing with her natural good humor, his tired but determined.

"Roxas didn't seem too happy that I'm still talking to him."

She rolled her eyes. "That's Roxas. He'll warm up to you."

It wasn't until Axel hopped in his car that he realized he should have told her what Roxas told him, that it would be hard for them to be friends. Exactly what she had said a month ago. _I wonder if they planned that,_ he thought as he drove home, sick of all of the cryptic messages and statements that didn't mean anything to him. Though maybe it would have been worth bringing up-maybe Olette would have some new advice to give, maybe she had changed her mind since she had first said it. She did encourage him to keep talking to him though, so that was a good sign.

But then, she was probably just glad that he wasn't bugging her to translate for the time being, but who knows how long he could keep up talking to Roxas on his own when he could only pick up about thirty percent of what the boy was saying-and that was when he was purposely dumbing himself down?

More than anything it was frustrating to be so completely in the dark. He felt like bringing up Roxas's comment after too much time has passed would come off as desperate, so he really regretted not saying anything while he had the chance. It was like coming up with the perfect comeback the day after a fight.

The following Monday fared better for Axel. He had some plan of what he wanted to say, and hopefully Roxas would be less taken aback by now and more willing to open up and have some form of a conversation with him.

" _Why were you at the club last month?_ " Axel asked. " _Going to listen to music doesn't seem like fun._ " This comment, he figured, could go either way. Roxas could honestly respond or roll his eyes at his lack of subtlety and look away. From a quick glance back, he could tell that Olette was dying to interject and was thankful when she kept to herself.

" _I was with my friend. But she-_ " Or was it he? " _left me for a guy. To dance._ " Axel felt some sort of metaphorical stab through his body, stopping him. Of course Roxas had friends, why wouldn't he? How egotistical was he, to think that he was going to be this boy's saving grace in the big, scary hearing world? It took him a moment to shake his feeling of utter idiocy and piece together what Roxas had said. Roxas had other friends, outside of school presumably. Big deal. Unless he had a boyfriend, Axel figured he was still in the clear.

" _I hate when friends do that_."

" _Same._ "

And with that, the professor stood and their conversation ended. On a surprisingly good note for once.

A half an hour later, when their professor rushed off to answer her cell phone and the class erupted into murmurs and laughter, Axel turned to talk to Roxas. Too late- he and Olette were already deep in some conversation. The first thing he noticed was that they weren't adhering to the strict order that the book taught him; their sentences went all over the place, words in any order; it was a little hard to follow. He remained that way, watching them intently and hoping that they didn't mind his blatant eavesdropping, was pleasantly surprised to find that every once in a while he could pick up enough to see what they were actually talking about, but one unfamiliar recurring sign caught his eye time and time again.

"So, what's this?" Axel asked as they filed out at the end of the period, pressing a closed fist against his chest.

"Oh, that's the sign name Roxas gave you. Here-" she moved his thumb out slightly. "A for Axel."

"Over the heart?" he commented, grinning.

"No, it's where you sign 'asshole'." She reached over and shifted his hand to the right before beginning to walk off to her next class.

"Great." Axel said to no one. A small group of boys stopped, staring. Axel whipped around, yelling: "What?"

Psh. Freshman.

 

 

That Friday, for the first time in what felt like a long time, Axel went out to the club. He sat in his normal seat at the bar, drinking his usual, taking in the sights, sounds, and scents he hadn't realized he missed. He'd spent far too many weekends locked up in his room learning another language for his own good. He closed his eyes, sighed, and took a long sip from the glass. He desperately needed to find balance. Slowly he'd been witnessing the weather get cooler and drier, the leaves on the trees dotting the campus no longer displaying a single hint of green. He recounted his midterms, decided that he did pretty decently, though he wouldn't know for sure for another week or so.

Winter Break would be coming up fairly soon and he couldn't wait for an entire month off, even if it meant finals were already just around the corner. It made him think of something Roxas had said to him as they filed out of class Wednesday. " _I don't know what I'm going to do for a month with no school. I would just like… seven days, maybe_." Axel smiled at the memory, but the spark of happiness was short-lived.

Roxas.

Who the hell knew what was going on on that front. Aside from an incident early on, their first conversations had at least waned from the hostile. And that unpleasantness resulted from a simple mistake; walking part-way to Roxas' next class, Axel had said, " _When I first met you I thought you were shy,_ " and had been left wondering why the boy shot him a baffled look before walking away without so much as a response. It wasn't until Olette had corrected him, smiling and semi-condescendingly, showing him that a cupped hand by the cheek brought slightly forward was _shy_ -what he had been aiming for- but cupped hand by the cheek leaving the face meant _whore_ -what he had actually said.

Even still, Axel figured it could have been worse. He could have followed that up by hitting Roxas with a laptop case or something.

Besides, Axel couldn't remember the last time they had gotten all caught up in a hair-too-big or stupid-name argument. Roxas was aloof for sure, but at least he seemed to begrudgingly accept Axel's attempts at small talk. He wasn't quite sure what the problem was, why Roxas, outwardly at least, seemed to be so scandalized by the very thought of him learning his language. Olette said he was really impressed, Olette said he liked Axel, and Axel wanted to trust her but so far nothing was coming from her assertions. Nothing he could see, anyway.

An immature, probably drunken part of him said, _this is an awful lot of work to get a little piece of ass_. But that wasn't what this was about, any of it. Not anymore. Well, maybe. He thought so.

The bottom line was, he was beginning to lose patience. The term was a little more than halfway over-though to his credit, he hadn't noticed Roxas until late September, early October- and he felt like no new developments had been made. He knew it was a matter of continuing to learn, to keep talking to him… but more and more he felt as though he couldn't keep it up much longer. Getting to actually talk to him should have been invigorating, not frustrating.

He supposed it had just been a long time since anyone actually made him feel like he had an actual heart, that he wasn't only capable of crushing and dating and fucking and leaving, that made this whole situation so hard to walk away from.

Still, he needed a break. From Roxas and Olette, from Lit itself, from broken blinds and scandalized freshmen.

He needed a break from life.

He just hoped that the holidays would clear his mind.

 

 

It was only two weeks until the end of the semester and Axel and Roxas had been able to maintain a tentative peace since winter break. Roxas seemed to have given up-for the time being-on being combative and argumentative, and Axel wasn't complaining. Maybe he finally realized that getting pissed over Axel's existence was pointless. It probably helped that Axel had really made the effort since his return to talk to them both outside of the classroom environment; occasionally Axel would drop by their table in the library for a few minutes as he headed out for lunch. He'd also begun to seriously tone himself down to avoid coming off as smarmy, and that hadn't hurt either.

So on the Roxas front, at least, things seemed to be calming down a bit. Axel's grasp of sign language continued to improve as he continued to study and even more as Roxas opened up to him, little by little. He couldn't believe how good a teacher simply watching Olette and Roxas proved to be. He was able to put in the occasional thought in their conversations as he headed to his next class if they ran into each other on campus, and for every grammatically correct, well-thought-out statement he came up with, he seemed to earn a little more of their trust.

The final turning point came on a Friday.

" _I'm sorry._ "

" _It's fine. Really._ "

Axel actually didn't mean to eavesdrop this time. He had been heading to the parking lot when he saw the two friends, both of their faces marked with varying degrees of frustration and distress.

" _What's wrong?_ " Axel asked, knowing full well he was probably about to get chewed for overhearing and putting his two cents in. His useless, useless two cents.

He caught Roxas say " _nothing_ " as he turned to look at Olette, who signed and spoke simultaneously.

"I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so I need to get out of class early. Roxas's car is shot to hell and I'm his ride since we have similar schedules, so he'd either need to leave early or really late. And he has an exam so he can't really leave early."

"So he's kind of stuck here? _Roxas, what time does your last class get out tomorrow_?"

" _6:15_."

" _No problem._ _I'm out at 6:30, do you want me to take you home? You'd have to wait maybe 20 minutes._ "

Roxas hesitated for a moment, glancing back at Olette as if he didn't know how to respond. Finally, he submitted. " _Fine. Okay. Thank you._ "

" _6:30,_ " Axel repeated, offering them a wave before continuing the walk to his car.

Well, that was unexpected.

The following day, Axel was buzzing. It was a sort of overly-excited anxiousness which stuck in the back of his head all day, only surfacing as his mind drifted in and out of class. In four hours, he and Roxas would be alone. He wondered how that would go without Olette there to buffer. After all, if they somehow got into a disagreement over something small as they had a tendency to do, they would just have to deal with it. Somehow.

Of course, Axel would be driving, and staring at the road with both hands on the steering wheel wouldn't exactly foster much time for conversation. Still, lack of time had never stopped them before as their brief, thirty-second conversations during computer slideshow changes in class indicated.

Still, for the first time it was going to be Axel and Roxas. Alone. Just the two of them. For at least fifteen minutes. Even longer than that if traffic got hairy or if Axel's car felt like being a piece of shit. He wasn't sure how Roxas felt about it, but to Axel, this could be everything. He felt like a child escorting a date to a school dance for the first time.

Shit; he was terrified. He hadn't been in a relationship since his sophomore year of college, and his freshman year had seen the end of drunken one night stands. There was so much riding on this. And he didn't even know if Roxas swung that way. He didn't know _anything._

By the time his last class let out, Axel had been able to calm himself down considerably. More than anything, he just wished the random bouts of his mind spewing abstract romantic philosophy would go away. But then, that was a good way to tell that Roxas was simply, well, special.

The library was on the other side of campus, which made for a somewhat irritatingly long walk, especially seeing as he was in such a hurry to get there in good time. When he arrived and finally located Roxas, he had only been a few minutes later than promised. The two exchanged short greetings as Roxas turned to pack his backpack and the two set off for the parking lot. Axel tapped Roxas on the shoulder.

" _Need any help?_ " he asked, motioning to the several books Roxas held. Roxas shook his head. Halfway to the parking lot, Axel realized that asking Roxas questions while his hands were full must have been the equivalent of when his dentist would shove a hand in his mouth and start asking questions about his day.

Well, at least he hadn't hit him with his laptop again.

Or called him a whore.

They continued their march in utter silence as the lanterns across campus began to light, just as it was becoming too dark to see in front of them. A cool breeze kicked up, causing Axel to zip up his sweatshirt and Roxas to walk faster. Axel began to speak as Roxas hurried passed him, to say that he didn't know where Axel was going and to stay behind, before remembering and shutting his mouth. Instead, he gently reached out, placing a hand on Roxas's shoulder just barely to make him slow down. To Axel's surprise, Roxas shot him an apologetic smile and lessened his pace until he and Axel were perfectly side-by-side. It felt oddly peaceful.

They soon reached the parking lot; Axel's car was easy to spot, seeing as it was the most beaten up piece of junk in the entire lot. He again put his hand on Roxas's shoulder, motioning over to the general row he had parked and quickly signing " _old_ ," and " _red_." Roxas nodded and, if Axel wasn't mistaken, smiled. Axel motioned for Roxas to step back as the approached his car. He walked around to the front passenger door, grabbed the handle, and yanked hard. The door flew open, throwing Axel back and down. Smooth. Roxas rushed over, looking somewhat concerned, but Axel just shook his head, grinning, brushed himself off, and motioned for him to climb in. He was searching through his backpack when Axel hopped into the driver's seat, but Axel paid no mind, too caught up in rummaging for his keys in one of his many pockets when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked up to see Roxas looking slightly harried, brows knit and mouth in a firm frown.

" _I'm sorry. I forgot something in the library_."

Axel frowned in thought; it was too dark for him to be comfortable letting someone as small as Roxas, especially someone who didn't have the advantage of hearing anyone coming up behind him, go all the way back by himself but at the same time—well, he really didn't want to walk across campus again. He was also willing to bet that insisting on accompanying Roxas would annoy the shit out of him. Axel sighed and thought for a moment before coming to a quick decision.

" _I'll park by the library. You run out and get what you need. I'll wait._ "

Roxas thanked him and said something else before the car's interior light switched off, leaving them both in the dark and completely muting Roxas's words. Distractedly, Axel apologized out loud, shoving his key into the ignition and hoping his car would start. It did, of course, but as usual it didn't sound very happy about it. Axel pulled out of his usual parking place and circled around the campus, almost missing the well-hidden path to the parking lot just outside the library. Fortunately he had been driving pretty slow; he wanted to get Roxas back to his place in one piece, after all, and suddenly stopping and swerving to get to where they needed to be didn't exactly scream "safe driver". He pulled up to the small pick-up and drop-off square and parked, giving Roxas a quick thumbs up as he left for his forgotten book.

After close to ten minutes passed, Axel began to get a little concerned. It could very well have been that his book wasn't where he left it and he was searching through the lost and found, or maybe struggling to talk to a librarian… it occurred to him that he should have gone with Roxas regardless. Axel removed his keys from the ignition and moved to open the door when he heard two loud voices. Axel couldn't quite make out what they were saying, but they were being noisy enough to be obnoxious, the voices extremely jarring in the calm night. Becoming irritated, Axel glanced over to see which jackasses were interrupting his ability to think.

His stomach dropped as though he'd heard bad news, and he jumped out of the car.

He didn't know who the two guys surrounding Roxas were. He couldn't tell if they were drunk or just being tools, he wasn't sure why they were constantly bumping Roxas, talking to and right over him and yelling at him, what the hell they were thinking, why they thought it was okay, what their deal was—and he didn't care. Axel shot over to Roxas so quickly that he couldn't even recall getting there in the first place—one moment he was in his car, the next he was by Roxas's side, shoving away the jerkasses still catcalling and laughing and grabbing.

The two guys must have realized it wasn't worth it as the laughter soon stopped all together, but Axel was too busy rushing to get Roxas to the car to look back and see where they had gone. A hand still resting on the blond's back, Axel fumbled opening the door before gently pushing him in and closing the door next to him. Roxas's face was unreadable as he worked at shoving his book in his backpack.

When Axel climbed into the driver's seat, he slammed the door as hard as he could. He had no idea what the hell that was all about, but he was furious. Still steaming, he turned to look at Roxas, tapped him on the shoulder and helplessly asked, " _What happened?_ " For a while, Roxas didn't respond, focusing on how to simply phrase his thoughts.

" _I think they were looking to see if I had anything expensive. When they saw I couldn't hear them talking to me, they thought they would mess with me._ "

" _Does that happen often_?"

He shrugged, his posture relaxed but a slightly shaken look on his face.

" _…It happens._ " Not wanting to press further, Axel allowed a silence to settle in the car. Slowly, he went to reach for his keys when he felt a tap at his shoulder. " _I'm glad you were here. I don't know what would have happened if I had been waiting alone for Olette or if you had come a few minutes later._ "

" _I'm glad I was here, too,_ " Axel responded. He just wished in that moment that Roxas could hear, if only so he could absorb Axel's voice just to get how sincere he really was; the idea of something happening to Roxas, especially if Axel could have helped but didn't, shook him to his core. But he supposed his face must have said it all by the way the boy smiled at him. " _…Now let's get you home._ "

The drive home was uncomfortably silent, though Axel knew it could be no other way. He considered turning on his radio—oddly, the only part of his car that seemed to work just fine—and wondered if it would be disrespectful. He glanced over at Roxas staring out the window, and finally decided that the quiet wasn't working for him. The first station he turned it to was playing some rap song he couldn't seem to get away from, whether it was playing on TV or at a club, but he just appreciated having something distract him from his endless musings about Roxas or his furious internal death threats to the guys who would dare make such a small, young kid, a deaf kid, so uncomfortable on purpose. There, he was getting irritated just _thinking_ about thinking about it. What they were doing was bullying, pure and simple—and nothing pissed Axel off more than a bully who thought he was funny.

Sometime after the song's intro the bass kicked in and only then did Axel realize and wonder just why he had the bass setting cranked up so high. His windows rattled, the seats shook, and he had a bad feeling that he was suddenly being _that_ asshole who drove around, radio blasting, creating minor earthquakes where ever he went. As he stopped at a red light, Axel began messing with the settings on his radio, trying to make the pounding stop but to his surprise, Roxas smacked his hand back. In the dim light cast from a streetlamp over them, he just barely caught what Roxas was saying.

" _I like this song_." And something he wasn't totally sure of; Roxas liked something, and Axel gathered that it was a beat or rhythm.

Slowly Axel leaned back in his seat and placed both hands on the wheel. Roxas wanted loud music, Roxas got loud music. Okay.

The drive to Roxas's was finished, of course, in silence. After the song had ended, Axel was quick to switch off the radio and, if Roxas cared, it wasn't enough to try and stop him.

Axel pulled into the driveway of a small condominium in a surprisingly well-to-do neighborhood. He parked and waited but Roxas didn't move. Axel wasn't quite sure just how long they waited in the car together like that, simply staring out the window, making no attempts at conversation or even acknowledging the other's existence.

Then, timidly and unsure, Roxas held out his hand. Axel took it in his own, his large hand wrapped almost completely around Roxas's small one. The action was tiny, insignificant, but it said more than words of any language could.

Acceptance.

Trust.

Somehow, they were making progress.

Axel gave Roxas's hand a quick squeeze before letting go, feeling uneasy about what he had just been granted, the power he received by restricting the boy's—well, the man's—ability to communicate. With equal hesitation and some difficulty maneuvering, Axel leaned across his seat and pulled Roxas close to him, catching the scent of his hair and warmth of his body, captivated, as Roxas slowly wrapped his arms around the older man. It lasted a minute, probably less, but they both found themselves at a loss as to how to pull away casually, how to go back and act as though it hadn't happened.

Awkwardly, Roxas unbuckled himself and reached down to grab his backpack. His and Axel's eyes met just long enough for the two of them to say their goodbyes as Roxas hopped out of the car, swinging the pack over one shoulder and moving to shut the door. Before he did so, he peeked his head in and said, as clear as day, muffled-sounding and imperfect but beautiful, "Thank you."

For a long time, all Axel could do was stare out in front of him, watching the porch light flicker on and off as the winter breeze kicked up and faded into stillness. Finally, he started for home, the heat of Roxas's arms still around him.


	4. Unexpected Visitors and Unexpected Invitations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Axel and Roxas kind of make a date. Sort of.

After the initial blossoming of Axel and Roxas' friendship, the two became inseparable on campus. Axel could often be found accompanying Roxas to his next class or to and from the library whenever he had the time. Sometimes they had deep and involving conversations about their day so far, what they were facing in school and at home, love and life and everything in between. Sometimes they kept their statements short and simple, pointing out the air's sudden warmth, the leaves growing back on the trees, an inconsistency between a desire for snow and thankfulness for Twilight Town's mild winters. Sometimes they said nothing at all, lost in their own thoughts and simply enjoying the closeness of the other.

Axel thought it must have been a load off Olette's mind, now that she didn't have take care to be around Roxas at all times, now that he had someone else who didn't mind sticking close to translate for Roxas if it came down to that. It must have been nice for Roxas, too, to have just another friend around campus to hang around with. But the three of them could all be thankful for the fact that the stupid hair arguments were mercifully, completely, totally over with. In fact, it was kind of nice seeing that Olette was getting the chance to mingle with her hearing friends. As much as she insisted she loved Roxas and loved translating for him—and Axel didn't doubt her a bit—changes of scenery are necessary every once in a while.

So that was one problem down; the first step had been taken and things could only progress from there. Of course, Axel still had no idea what he was going to do with the degree he had worked his way toward for the past four years, why in such a time of exploration and change he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life, and why his major still struck him with nothing more than indifference. He liked what he did. He thought.

At least work had picked up, finally. He would have been much more thankful if the timing hadn't been so rotten. Of course he would get stuck with more hours than ever when he was beginning to slog through long thesis papers and more tests than he knew how to study for. He missed his English class with Roxas and Olette. Even the hair arguments were better than days full of two hour classes with professors who looked like they hadn't even heard the word "fun" since sometime in the 1930s. Not that he ever expected college to be all fun and games, not like high school had been, but still. At least in his classes from the previous term, there was a bit of excitement. Mostly in the form of a short blond sophomore. But Axel took what he could get.

All in all, though, Axel couldn't deny that things were definitely settled for the moment. His life was hectic, of course, but at some point he'd reached a frame of mind where he found he could take it all in stride. Despite his average of five hours of sleep a night, he felt more well rested when he woke each morning than he had for a long, long time. Slowly, and though it didn't seem like it, things were looking up.

One day, Roxas surprised Axel over at his place. 'Surprise' was the operative word.

It was 4 p.m. on a Saturday when Axel heard a knock on the door and waited for Zexion to get it. He had gotten sucked into a movie he had found online and wasn't about to leave the comfortable spot on his bed just to go tell someone they had the wrong apartment. The last thing he expected was to hear two sets of footsteps nearing his bedroom door and Zexion peeking his head in to say he had company. Axel let out an irritated sigh and ran his fingers through his mussed-up hair, then froze when he looked up and saw Roxas standing in his room. He felt like a half-naked slob in a gray tank top, his jeans sloppily thrown on, fly pretty much only partially zipped, one of his socks hanging almost entirely off his foot.

"Roxas! Ah, shit." Axel jumped up, nearly knocking over his laptop, and jerked his sock back on his foot. He wasn't sure why that was the first thing he felt he needed to fix. He caught Roxas's shy apology as he glanced over and motioned him to come in before reaching to buckle his belt properly.

Roxas took a seat on the edge of his bed, about two feet away from Axel. After the man finished putting himself together, they remained that way. Axel wasn't quite sure how to ask what Roxas was doing there without seeming unhappy about it-he certainly wasn't- and even Roxas didn't really seem to know what to say or do, staring at the carpet or walls, hands folded in his lap. After the awkwardness became too much, he decided to do something. Anything.

Reaching across the bed, Axel clutched onto Roxas's sleeve with his whole hand and _yanked_. He successfully slid the boy over to the point that they were only a few inches apart, though not without seriously ruffling his bed covers-he hoped Zexion wouldn't see the mess later and get the wrong idea. Fighting against the looming threat of awkwardness taking over once more, Roxas flung himself at the redhead, wrapping his arms around him tightly. It took Axel a moment to recuperate from the attack and realize that he had returned the hug almost automatically.

Finding that his heart rate had seemed to increase to borderline-dangerous levels, Axel took a deep breath.

"Stop it," he muttered to himself, comforted that Roxas couldn't tell. Wouldn't think that he was a psycho who liked talking to himself. Which he kind of was.

Gently, he moved his hand, feeling the blond shudder as his fingers danced up his back and up to his shoulders. His other hand dropped down, finding Roxas's hip and staying there. Roxas leaned in, pressing his cheek against Axel's chest. The motion was tentative, hesitant, but once it had been done, he seemed to have no intention of moving.

The clock on his wall told Axel that five minutes had passed before they finally broke apart, but to him it seemed like seconds. He wasn't sure where his mind had been, just that he knew that he was comfortable the entire time. Being close to the kid felt _right_ , familiar, natural.

The problem was, after they had pried themselves apart from one another, they still didn't seem to know what to say. Roxas brushed his hair back with his fingers, avoiding looking at the redhead next to him.

After far too long, Axel finally initiated the conversation. He couldn't lie; the fact that he didn't seem to know what to do around Roxas in a simple change of setting was discouraging. For a moment, he wished that the arrogant Axel who always knew what to do was still in existence, but then he remembered that his initial tactics of simply charming the man hadn't gone all that well. Surprisingly… just being himself was going oddly well.

" _So, what are you doing here?_ "

Axel suspected that Roxas was still avoiding looking him in the eye when he replied, _"Seriously, I was in the area and I wanted to come by. Sorry, I guessed that would be okay with you."_

" _It is!"_ Axel responded, fully aware of his over-eagerness. Okay, so he was acting like a dork--he just didn't want Roxas to get the wrong impression. " _How'd you get here? Is your car working again? "_

"… _Somewhat. I think the mechanics ripped me off. And I came with Olette, she needed to drop something off to someone a few doors down."_

" _Is there anyone she doesn't know?"_ Roxas smiled grimly at that.

" _No,"_   he said simply _. "I think there's a law that says that everyone in Twilight Town has to check in with Olette at some point or another."_ Axel grinned.

" _I think that law-_ " And then he stopped. More or less cursing himself for not knowing how to sign "expired" or if another word worked as an accurate synonym, he changed his sentence. " _I think in high school that law applied to me. Then I got old and became a shut-in."_

At that, Roxas laughed. With no real concept volume control, the sound was startlingly loud. Still, it could also have been that Axel had never actually heard Roxas laugh before; he tended to rest a bit on the doom and gloom side. After that exchange, conversation began to flow a little more naturally.

" _Has your weekend been good?"_

" _Yeah. I took some time to get caught up on a lot of things I needed to get done."_

" _That's good. I wish I was as motivated as you are."_

Roxas shrugged. _"I was just bored."_

" _You have a roommate?"_

" _No. Just me."_

" _Is that safe? I mean, if anything happens…"_ At that, Roxas stiffened.

" _I can take care of myself. What? Do you think that I need to be watched over because I'm-"_

" _No,"_ Axel interrupted, hoping he'd be seen. _"No, I didn't mean that at all."_

" _I live in a safe neighborhood and I'm fine. I've lived on my own for two years, I can handle it."_

" _No, I didn't mean…"_ Axel sighed and rubbed the back of his neck before continuing. _"I'm an idiot."_   He closed his eyes, half-expecting to hear the sound of Roxas's feet on the carpet and the front door slamming shut. He blew it. He wasn't 100 percent sure which part of what he said was wrong, but he blew it. He was surprised to feel Roxas's small hand on his knee seconds later, and when he looked back down, the blond was smiling.

" _It's okay. You meant well. I… you just don't know. That's okay."_

A sudden thought struck Axel, and he decided to get it out before the courage left him. " _If_ _you ever get lonely or bored, you can head over here. Just give me a call."_ _Shit_ he just told Roxas to call him. Fortunately, the phrasing didn't seem to get to him.

" _Cool. I'll text you sometime. Where's your phone? I'll give you my number."_ As Axel handed Roxas his phone for him to enter his information, another thought came to him. He waited as Roxas finished up, even taking a picture of himself to attach a face to the new name in his address book. As Roxas handed the phone back and Axel was able to catch his eye. " _What do you mean I don't know?"_

Roxas smiled, but it wasn't a look that Axel liked. It made Axel think of the kind of smile you might give a precocious child who has asked one too many questions. On top of that, he didn't give a direct answer.

" _This Sunday, I'm going to visit some friends. I'm going to my hometown, it's—it's about an hour away, maybe, and we're going to head to church and then out to lunch. Do you want to come with me?"_   Maybe Axel was only imagining the hopeful look on Roxas's face?.

" _Yes. I'll go_."

Face bright, Roxas responded, " _I'll pick you up at 8AM."_

" _Great."_

There was another moment of silence, and for a second Axel considered pulling him close again like before. And maybe just completely refusing to ever let go. But before he could even make a move—which honestly he doubted he would have had the nads to do anyway—Roxas pulled out his cell phone, punched a few buttons, and rose from his seat. " _I should get going. If I don't get Olette, she'll stay all night._ " He lingered in Axel's doorway for a moment, as though unsure whether or not to go. Finally, he quickly signed, " _It was nice seeing you._ " and was off before Axel even had the chance to escort him out.

Sunday.

It was kind of a date. Sort of.


	5. Dates and Disputes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rocky start.

Axel woke up at 7 A.M. Sunday morning and he wasn't entirely thrilled about it. It wasn't about Roxas-hell, he would have gotten up at 4 in the morning if it meant getting to spend the day with Roxas- but damn, he was tired. He really, _really_ needed new blinds; a streetlight that normally didn't work decided to flicker in his face all night long, which made trying to fall asleep a total bitch. When his alarm went off yet again at 7:30, he knew he couldn't buy himself any more time. Grumbling, he rolled out of bed and set off to the bathroom to start his routine. He hoped that splashing cold water on his face would help wake himself up, but all it succeeded in doing was make him cold and wet. Finally he decided to quit fucking around, brush his teeth, and get dressed.

Easier said than done.

It wasn't until he started rooting through his dresser drawers that he realized just how much he dressed like a slob. Or, well, like a 21-year-old man. He owned plenty of dark jeans; he owned T-shirts and a few tank tops. That was about it. Axel hadn't been to church since he was…what? Six years old? Eight? He had no idea what the hell he was supposed to look like. A brief look at the clock told him that he should be expecting in Roxas in less than ten minutes, and if he came early, Axel was sort of fucked. Without truly thinking about it, he threw on a pair of his slightly looser, less-faded black jeans and an at least somewhat decent-looking gray, long-sleeved shirt that he pretty consistently forgot he even owned. And he was sure that he had a nice jacket and actual shoes-not sneakers-somewhere, hiding in the darkest corners of his closet.

He somewhat noticed the sound of his roommate rising, his socked feet padding around the living room. He glanced at the clock again: three minutes.

"Shit."

He all but dived into his closet to dig out some decent shoes, but sadly his jacket was nowhere to be found. When he really thought about it, he was pretty sure that he had donated it a while back to some clothing drive on campus. That was kind of shitty luck, but oh well. Nothing he could do about it.

He slid the shoes on his feet, grudgingly noticing that they pinched his toes and not quite thrilled to realize that _getting new shoes_ was just another thing to add to his ridiculously huge to-do list. When he emerged from his room at 8:12, he could have kicked himself; Roxas was already there and from the way he was seated on the couch, phone out, mid-text, as though he lived there, it seemed as though he'd been there for a while. Axel rushed over and reached over the couch, placing a hand on Roxas' shoulder.

The blond jumped harder than Axel knew possible.

Well, shit. Hopefully that wasn't an omen.

Axel stammered a weak apology as Roxas glanced over, forgetting once again that his words were useless. Roxas looked relieved, then annoyed, as he calmed and pulled himself together, sighing heavily out his nose. Axel recognized that "pretend nothing happened" air that surrounded him as he brushed his hair back and shrugged. As he reached to pick up his phone, dropped on the floor in all the excitement, Axel remembered something Olette told him once: don't sneak up on a deaf person- just don't. 

Well, at least he hadn't actually physically harmed him.

Again.

"Sorry." The word left his mouth, yet again, before he could think about it. He hardly even saw Roxas as deaf anymore. Really, Axel was beginning to see that all of the little layers, the little judgments he hadn't even realized he'd been making, had slowly begun to chip away, piece by piece. Which, he thought, was probably a good thing-after all, Roxas was a person, not his life. Not his cute face.

Still, if he started forgetting to use sign, Roxas would probably think he was a lazy douchebag. Which was admittedly a little true, but the guy didn't need to know that.

After he released his hold on his chest, presumably after his heart had gone back to beating at a normal pace, Roxas asked, " _Ready to go_?"

Checking his back pocket one more time for his wallet and phone, he responded, " _Yeah. Have you been waiting for a long time_?"

" _No. Five minutes. Let's go_."

They slowly filed out of the apartment, neither of them particularly trying to communicate with the other. Just as Axel was beginning to think that Roxas was miffed over being startled, he let out a large yawn. Well, okay then; Axel had to admit, it was nice to know that he wasn't the only tired bum. And he tried not to feel that familiar sense of exasperation as Roxas pulled his keys from his pocket and unlocked his car doors with the single click of a button. So cool. Axel's car didn't do that. Axel's car still had a manual hand crank to roll down the windows.

It was kind of nice to be sitting in the seat of a car that wasn't a total piece of shit. Actually, it was pretty damn nice. Roomy, clean, and probably new, the thing was amazing. Roxas either got really lucky or his parents were loaded. And judging from his condo and the neighborhood it was in, Axel guessed it was probably the latter. It took all his self control to keep himself from punching all the buttons in front of him just to see what they did. If he had the sense of self awareness for it, he would have been jealous.

At least goggling at the car distracted him from the long ride and Roxas's slightly terrifying driving. Roxas was far from reckless; he drove a bit on the fast side, but who doesn't? Axel was much more worried about the hypothetical: if someone honked, what would Roxas do? Did Axel need to alert him? That would take his eyes off the road and ran the risk of offending him. What if there was an ambulance and they needed to pull over? Roxas would have no clue. And really, what bothered him most of all was that Roxas probably drove on his own somewhat frequently. If something did happen that Roxas was unaware of, offending him be damned, he could get hurt--or at least ruin his car.

So Axel finally just decided to keep his eyes closed, his ears open, and roll with it. He would stop worrying about everything once he actually woke up a bit more and calmed down from his shoe-panic from the morning.

The next thing he knew, a door was slamming. The car was parked and Roxas was climbing out and stretching.

It took him a moment to come to the realization that he had, in fact, completely slept through the entire two-hour ride and when he did he scrambled to get up and out of the car, swearing loudly. He could have sworn his eyes were closed for a second; he hadn't been tired. Well, not too tired, anyway.

It was 10AM, and he had already managed to fuck multiple things up.

Roxas, thankfully, didn't seem to notice a thing. He looked cheerier than usual; his smile didn't falter even once as he waited for Axel to pull himself together and step out of the car.

" _Ready?_ "

Axel was. The two of them made a short hike up a low, grassy hill to get to the small building which didn't even look like a real church. He was too used to the sophisticated, intimidating cathedrals of the city. Those came in two flavors: foreboding and towering with their old world carvings and statues, Saints and angels and demons watching from the rooftops-or, alternatively, sleek and modern and sterile.

This was… not. It was small and white, old but clean-looking, and Axel wasn't surprised to find that it looked just as much like an office on the inside as it did on the outside. He trotted behind Roxas, hands in his pockets, taking in the thin brown carpet, the beige walls decorated with images of religious scenes playing out benignly in their picture frames.

Roxas led them into a small room, just tucked away for Axel to realize that he could probably get lost in this place. As small as it was, there were a lot of little twists and turns.

They took the only empty set of two seats, toward the middle of the back row, just as the… (preacher? Priest? Minister? Axel had no idea what he was called) began to speak.

Well, getting there was the first hurdle. And, Axel hoped, the last.

 

 

Church had gone on fairly well. Despite the bright red hair and tattoos he didn't seem too out of place, and service had luckily ended just before Axel felt like crying for mercy, though not before his empty stomach decided to. He remembered why his family never attended church, though. Wasn't quite his thing. But he did enjoy getting to watch the interpreter, especially since he could pick up so much of what she was saying. He was looking forward to getting the chance to talk to everyone once they got to the restaurant. He was going to bring his A game.

There was a minor incident, though, which Axel figured he must have made up, considering no one else seem to think anything as odd about the sermon- he could have sworn that at some point the interpreter had inadvertently called _someone_ a bitch. He'd have to go talk to Olette later and see what sign he confused it with. _Not_ corrupting similar signs wasn't his strong suit; he had, after all, once said Roxas seemed like a whore instead of saying he seemed shy.

Well, that or service had been _much_ more interesting than he thought.

Still, that was such a tiny, little mix-up. And he'd grown a lot since then; any reservations Axel may have had at the beginning were all but gone. The fact that Roxas was deaf was often a thought that didn't even occur to him, his signing was now quite competent, and Roxas was inviting him into his own pool, his own private world. Honestly, he couldn't believe the way their relationship had progressed in only a couple of weeks. This had to mean that things were just going to keep getting better-it _had_ to.

And even though there was a post-rain chill to the air, the morning's gray clouds had cleared, it was sunny and green, warm as the sunlight beat on his face throughout the car ride, and he was finally about to get some effing food. Needless to say, his mood had improved greatly from when he awoke that morning.

Roxas pulled into a parking spot close to two other cars that Axel recognized as his friends'. Judging from the somewhat upscale models and nearly-holy new car sheen, it was becoming clear to Roxas that not only was he loaded, but he didn't exactly hang out with poor people, either. A touch of self-consciousness threatened to kick in, but Axel squashed it. The last thing he needed was to develop some sort of complex; he didn't have enough fucks to spare. Besides, it wasn't like they were eating at some sort of fancy café; it was just a plain, dime-a-dozen chain diner. This time he beat Roxas out of the car, and fingered the beaten-up leather wallet in his back pocket as Roxas climbed out and locked up. He pulled his wallet out and opened it. Empty, as always, except for his emergency twenty.

Well, a make-or-break date was sort of an emergency. He slid his wallet back into his pocket as Roxas reached his side and they exchanged quick glances-Axel's grin making Roxas break into a smile of his own- and headed in. A blonde girl that Axel could have sworn he'd seen before caught their attention and waved them over to the booth at the side. She quickly signed something, but Axel only looked over to catch the phrase "five minutes". Presumably, their wait time. Not bad at all considering just how crowded the place was.

Almost as soon as Axel decided to quit being awkward and actually take a seat next to his blond, their party was called and they were taken to a freshly-cleaned table. As they got themselves situated, sliding into the C-shaped booth, Roxas made his quick introduction. Again Axel missed a chunk of it, he _really_ needed to be more on top of things, but he saw the end of his name being signed to the three others. Roxas jabbed Axel quite hard with his elbow as the redhead got situated, putting his wallet in a place where the zipper wouldn't keep poking his ass.

Roxas' bony elbow making contact with his poor, unguarded side was a decidedly effective way of grabbing his attention. He then made a somewhat sweeping motion to his left, spelling out the names of the people beside him at a speed Axel had never seen from him before. " _There's Hayner, Naminé, and Pence. Pence is hearing, too._ "

That was about the last of the conversation that Axel could comprehend. Apparently his friends didn't know or just didn't care that he wasn't exactly as fluent as they were -for obvious reasons-as all of his attempts to cut in were essentially squashed. Their movements were so rapid that by the time Axel could absorb it, they had already moved on.

...maybe he was just more tired than he thought.

Their attention all shifted as the waitress strode up, notepad in hand, absently tapping one of her feet as she waited for the group to write down their orders. Axel found himself feeling greatly uncomfortable for some reason, as though he was still sitting on his wallet's large metal zipper. But not quite... he just couldn't put his finger on it. He told himself the feeling was because he just couldn't believe that the diner didn't have anyone who could understand sign, considering the size of the deaf community, that the girl was being so disrespectful-but he knew that wasn't right, and that made the feeling worsen.

The waitress huffed. And puffed. And tapped her pen impatiently against her pad of paper. He felt like he was making everyone else in the restaurant wait, he felt like he was out of place and people were judging them, he felt impatient and embarrassed and he didn't know why.

At last, Axel tapped Roxas on the shoulder.

" _Do you want me to order for you guys_?" Roxas shook his head but didn't look up to his face, choosing to resume writing. The death glare that Hayner shot him, however, said it all. Axel crossed a line. But then, it seemed as though Roxas' best friend had had it in for him since they met.

…Okay. He was getting ridiculous.

Still, doing something stupid and already offending one of them before they even got their drinks wasn't his best idea. He wished he could have taken the question back; but then, Roxas didn't seem to mind. Maybe Axel imagined it.

There was a moment of no one saying anything before Roxas and Hayner launched into a side conversation of their own, giving Pence a chance to exchange a few words with Axel. Well, at least someone was talking to him. Naminé was doodling on a napkin with a crayon left behind by the family before them.

As their food finally arrived, and Roxas and Hayner began to wrap up their conversation, Axel couldn't help but eavesdrop, catching anything he could when they were so far ahead of him.

" _You said-_ " something, something. The only thing Axel could get was that Hayner was pissed at something. Or maybe he just always signed with that much…enthusiasm. Now he got what Olette meant when she went on how important eye contact was, but he couldn't get a very good look at Hayner's face.

" _No. I'm not, we were just trying to—_ " Roxas turned his back too much, Axel couldn't see the rest of his sentence.

"… _Well, sorry. I didn't know that this would be a problem with your boyfriend._ "

" _Axel is NOT my boyfriend._ "

 

That was it. That was just it.

Axel was done with this.

Fuck it. Fuck the whole day, fuck church and diners and sign language. Fuck Roxas.

Axel didn't so much as utter or sign a word for the rest of the meal, and the car ride back was void of any conversation before they set off. If Roxas noticed anything, he didn't speak up about it.

The next two hours were spent in a painful, uncomfortable silence-for Axel, anyway. He wanted to just open the door and jump out of the moving vehicle; he wanted to walk around, clear his head, be as far away from the blond as possible. He sat, seething, watching buildings and trees pass him by, and when he finally saw the familiarity of his apartment complex, all he could think was, _I've never been so glad to see this shithole_.

He started to undo his seatbelt before the boy driving had even parked and, as soon as he got the opportunity, all but threw himself out, slamming the door behind him. Harder than intended, but he didn't care. He was too pissed to care.

A tap on the shoulder. He turned around. " _What the hell was that about?_ "

" _I wanted to ask you the same thing._ " The look of angry confusion that spread across Roxas' face was answer enough. " _Why would you do that to me? I thought-I thought-_ " Axel could hardly find words in his own language, let alone this alien one. He threw his hands up in frustration, causing Roxas to step back as though he was about to be struck. " _I thought things were different between us. Okay?_ "

"… _What are you talking about?_ "

Axel sighed, ran his fingers through his hair. Composed himself. " _Look. Just… go away._ " At that, he finally mustered the courage to look Roxas in the eye. He figured it must have said a lot about his current distraught state that the look of absolute hurt-hurt then confusion then anger-didn't faze Axel at all.

" _Fine. See you around._ " And with that, he turned, climbed back into his car, and sped off.

"Or not," Axel replied softly, heading home at last.

Axel ignored his roommate's rare attempt to talk to him as he walked in the door, letting the "How'd it go?" slide off him with a grunt of a response. He walked straight into his room, pushed down the broken, battered blinds to block out the late-afternoon sun, and flopped down on his bed.

His mind was still buzzing from the events of the morning, and the fight. He wondered if Roxas was still feeling half as upset as he, himself, was. He then snorted; Roxas didn't really have that right. He was the one who…

He sighed again.

He had just been looking forward to this day so much. He thought that Roxas invited him because there was something growing between them, that Roxas wanted Axel to be a part of his life. Instead it felt like it was all a ruse, a way to say, _look how little you know. Look how little you belong._ Axel didn't expect to be instantly accepted-but he kind of did-and he hadn't thought that Roxas would exactly say, "hey everyone, this is my boyfriend"-but he had-and the whole thing left him feeling as though he had been thrown under the bus.

Crush-thing.

Apparently not.

He wanted Roxas. He wanted Roxas so much it ached.

He wanted to get in there and be able to understand everything that everyone said, he wanted to get right into the conversation and charm everyone with his knowledge and skill. Instead, all he got was the realization that all his studying hadn't gotten him very far and Roxas still dumbed himself down to speak to Axel.

And that Roxas would be offended and appalled by the idea of Axel being his boyfriend.

 _Axel is NOT my boyfriend._ Standing up for Axel came second in Roxas' argument with Hayner, as long as the boy knew that Axel was apparently very little to him.

The worst part was-and maybe it was only because he was there as an outsider, and he hoped that's all it was-he felt out of place. He felt like he was getting unwanted attention hanging around with a group of kids (that's all they were, too, really-kids) signing openly. He acted disgusted about the impatient waitress, but not even four years ago he wouldn't have had any qualms about obviously making fun of them. He would have _been_ the snotty waiter not four years ago, but just then.

He just thought he had changed. But he had actually been annoyed to be with them.

He hated himself for it.

_Axel is NOT my boyfriend._

He didn't blame him.

Finally submitting to the exhaustion he had been feeling all day, Axel rolled over and went to sleep.


	6. Resolutions and Revelations

Axel woke up at seven in the evening wide awake and absolutely starving. He'd been asleep for four hours, which turned out to be just enough time for him to have reached an appropriately disoriented state. He desperately racked his brain, trying to figure out if he'd slept through the night and had to start getting ready for class, or if he still had time before the night ended. Glancing outside provided no real indicators. The thought, _it was light five minutes ago_ floated into his head more than once. Then the memory of the day's events rolled back in and he felt a familiar surge of annoyance.  
  
The sight of Zexion in the kitchen told him it was, in fact, Sunday night. Had it been morning, Zexion would be preparing to leave for class. At least that was one question answered.  
  
Axel got himself a bagel; neither of them spoke. He supposed the way he slammed the door to his room earlier in the day and hadn't emerged even once since then was enough of an indicator of how it all went. Again he found himself thankful that his roommate didn't care about other people's business; he was by no means in the mood to talk about it.  
  
Without considering the time, Axel grabbed an energy drink from the refrigerator. It wasn't until he had chugged nearly the whole thing before realizing he wasn't going to get any sleep that night, but that particular epiphany left him indifferent. He doubted he would have gotten any sleep anyway.

A sudden thought hit him and he rushed to get his keys from their normal spot on the counter.  
  
"I'll be back late tonight," he said as a simple courtesy to Zexion, although he knew he wouldn't notice either way if he had left. Obvious best friends in the making.  
  
When Axel reached the car repair shop frequenters called The Garage, an odd but familiar surge of comfort overcame him. The place had been like a second home to him since he was fifteen. It had been his first job and the owner, Cid Highwind, was batty but a good guy and great at what he did. Really, Axel would forever be in debt to him for always giving him a place to park his car and for providing him with the supplies and knowledge he needed in order to get more work done on his big, red, piece of junk. Hell, if it hadn't been for Cid, Axel would have actually been forced to stop being so stubborn and just save enough for a different car years ago. The fact that with all the money that the work he'd done on the damn thing required, he could have easily just gone ahead and gotten himself a nice used car… well, that was something his parents enjoyed bringing up quite often.  
  
But this was Axel's baby. Just giving up and getting a new car at this point would have felt a lot like failure. And he felt like he'd done enough failing in his lifetime. Plus, if he only committed to one thing in his life, at least this made him happy. His car was unpredictable and frustrating, but it could never personally disappoint him, nor him it. He spent too much time completely invested in it to just shake it off.  
  
To just shake him off.  
  
Axel slid under his car, wrench in hand, and stopped before realizing he hadn't needed to. Reflex. He slid back out again, feigning casualness, hoping no one saw his mistake. He reached for Cid's old toolbox and stopped again, this time in deep thought. The world could have frozen in its place.  
  
Pretty soon Monday would make its way over the horizon, and then he'd probably have to face Roxas sooner or later.  
  
Thinking about the day's events, after a few hours of uninterrupted sleep and enough time to wake up, didn't bring the same surge of anger as before. He still felt a little tense, but he guessed that that would go away in the morning. Maybe it was being so comfortable at the Garage, maybe it was because his mind always felt clear and epiphany-ready as he cleaned, took apart, and put together.  
  
A half hour passed, letting lazy, vague thoughts of homework, Roxas, and his car's air conditioner drift in and out of his mind at random. At some point he caught his reflection in the rear view mirror and noticed a streak of dark grease on his forehead. Only slightly concerned, he looked down at his arms, which he figured he must have used to brush his hair back. Sure enough, the outside of his right forearm was also coated in grime. Probably from when he was a complete dumbass and went under his car, his arm most likely making contact with the filthy ground. And he hadn't bothered changed out of his nice shirt, either. _Oh well_ , Axel thought with a noncommittal grunt. _Not like I'll be needing it again._  
  
"I think my AC's almost back," Axel said loudly, but Cid was talking to one of his workers. He fiddled for another fifteen minutes before feeling satisfied that it was at least good enough. It wasn't as though he'd had any real aim in coming, anyway. A quick turn of the key in the ignition set a wave of cold air blasting from all the slots in the dashboard but one, which he figured he had just shut it a while ago and then forgot about entirely. Axel knew it would be an easy check and an easier fix if it was just busted, but it was getting late. He did have class the next morning, after all.  
  
Still lost in thought about Roxas, Axel packed his things and prepared to leave. He was gone before he realized that Cid had said goodbye and felt like a bit of a tool for ignoring him. Oh well-- wasn't as though he wasn't there all the time. He'd say goodbye twice next time to make up for it.  
  
At least he had somewhat come up with a plan to talk to Roxas. At least he knew that he wasn't willing to throw all that hard work away. If it ended up with Roxas and Olette hating him forever, at least he followed through. At least he had tried to change.  
  
At eleven, Axel got home and collapsed in bed. His mind clearer than it had been since his outburst, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.  
  
With the new morning came the old routine—sort of. Axel was starting to believe that, by the time he was ready to move out of his apartment and go off to live his own life, he would probably owe Zexion his life.  
  
In his exhaustion the night before, Axel didn't think to set his alarm. Lucky for him, Zexion seemed to notice the lack of movement from the room by the time he needed to leave and thought to quickly knock on Axel's door once, just loud enough to surely wake him up.  
  
Feeling restless, Axel chose to get up right then, forgoing the extra hour or so of sleep he knew was available to him. He took a quick wake-up-you-lazy-bum shower and threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt before heading out into the empty living room.  
  
He didn't quite know what to do with himself.  
  
For a couple of minutes he stood still in the center of the room, finding that just about everything looked unappealing. No book, game, or TV show could wipe the cloud from his mind. Finally he decided to head into the kitchenette and grab a bagel, though he found he had lost his taste for it this morning. There were two sides to him, warring and raging in his head: one felt hopelessly guilty for the way he treated Roxas the day before and the other, bruised side wanted nothing more to do with him.  
  
He knew that he would have to talk to Roxas-best sooner than later-but the closer it came to time to get to class, the more Axel realized that he had no idea how to go about this. He was starting to think that the smartest choice would be to go to Olette first and see what Roxas had told her, but… no. He learned sign in the first place to be able to speak one on one with Roxas; he couldn't keep getting a third party involved. And if he kept going to other people first, how on earth were he and Roxas supposed to get anywhere? They could talk, that wasn't a problem, but it already seemed like they couldn't actually communicate to save their lives.  
  
After his musings, Axel glanced at the clock. He had a half an hour to kill before he needed to head out.  
  
No better way to spend it than to crack open the sign book again.  
  
Oddly, as he left for class a little while later he found himself feeling somewhat… rejuvenated.  
  
There were some days when Axel's bio lab seemed to drag on for days on end. Those were the periods when they spent hours looking at cells magnified however thousands of times and were forced to write reports that wouldn't seem out of place in an elementary school compulsory science class. Mercifully, this was not one of those days. He felt just as bad that there seemed to be a nasty flu going around as the next guy, and like always was thankful that not living on campus seemed to make him completely invulnerable to these dorm-spread diseases, but when it meant that his longest class was reduced to a mere forty minutes, he couldn't help but wish that maybe his science professor could get sick a little more often. He didn't think he would able to concentrate through a three hour lab with his mind buzzing.  
  
As soon as they were dismissed, Axel made a bee line to the library in hopes that he would maybe find Roxas there. Pretending to casually look for a book, he scanned the aisles and glanced in every desk, chair, and cubicle for any trace of the pint-sized blond. He wished he and Roxas had compared schedules at the start of the new semester so that he would have even the glimmer of an idea of where he might be, or if he was even on campus that day. Feeling again disheartened, Axel realized he didn't even know what the boy's major was. Not only did his cluelessness leave him with no idea what building Roxas may be in or near, but it was just a further reminder of how he managed to fuck this all up. After all, isn't discussion of a person's major or minor usually the very first thing you asked a classmate you didn't know all that well?  
  
Sighing heavily, Axel finally flopped down on a beaten up couch near the library's automated double doors. Well, that was a bust. He absently watched a few people he vaguely recognized trickle in and out before deciding that he should at least use his time to get started on homework.  
  
Then, a thought struck him. _I have Roxas' number_. With a grin, the man dug his phone from his pocket and began scrolling through his contacts, desperate to find the one. Maybe if he got lucky and Roxas didn't delete his text on sight, he could get the boy over to the library so they could talk this thing out. He had his finger on the select button when he stopped. _He should be trying to contact_ me _._  
  
The very thought gave him a twinge of something—more guilt, maybe, he was acting like a child and he knew it- but it still gave him pause. _Homework now_ , he finally decided, _worry about this stupid Roxas situation later_. It didn't stop him from jumping to pick up the phone when he felt that familiar vibration, however, and he was all too eager to answer, hoping to any higher being that this was going to be what he thought it would be.  
  
He was definitely perplexed when he was greeted with his roommate's name on the cracked screen.  
  
Zexion  
12:24PM  
  
Get over to the tables by the welcome center. We need to talk.  
  
To say that Axel had absolutely no clue in the slightest of what this could even possibly regard would be a tragic understatement. He definitely felt a sense of foreboding as he packed his bag and started out the door. Had someone broken into their apartment? Or maybe there had been an emergency and whoever it was could only reach Zexion. He was trying to think if any of his friends or family even had the man's number as he walked quickly past the statue of the school's mascot (a stallion, which made for a convenient pick up line when talking to people from other schools, not that Axel would know or had tried it a few times or anything).  
  
He walked up a small, grassy hill before reaching the fountain and benches which meant that the welcome center was only a few more steps ahead. It took him a moment to find Zexion, seated on the opposite side of the building than Axel thought he would be. Good thing the big yellow umbrella attached to the table was such an eye catcher, or else he'd have probably stood over looking around like a moron for much longer than necessary.  
  
The reluctance to find out what this big news returned full force as Zexion noticed Axel taking a seat across from him and set down his book, face dead serious. _But then_ , Axel reminded himself, _he always looks that way._  
  
"What's going on, man?" Axel asked, every bit as serious as he felt.  
  
"When I went home for lunch, I found this." Zexion opened his book again and pulled out a half sheet of paper, sliding it across the table to Axel.  
  
 _Residents,_  
  
 _We regret to inform you that, due to an increase in price of utilities (gas, water, etc) the rent will be raised from $600/month to $750 /month to cover these expenses. It is important to us that we continue to provide you with the most excellent services and apologize deeply about any inconvenience this may cause. Effective 5/1/2008._  
  
"…Is this legit?"  
  
Zexion's face betrayed no emotion. "It was posted on several bulletin boards around back. I was sure to get this to you as soon as I could."  
  
"Son of a bitch." Shaking his head, he read the contents of the letter one more time. He sort of hoped he read it wrong. "Most excellent services? Bullshit. Everyone knows the heat maybe works twice a year." Zexion did not respond. "Man, seven-fifty? That's steep. They're supposed to be the cheaper alternative to the dorms."  
  
"Which means we either have to take in a third person or start looking elsewhere."  
  
"There are only two rooms."  
  
"I know. I was wondering if there would be anyone you can think of who would be willing to share."  
  
Axel knew Zexion meant Roxas, and he was pretty sure Zexion knew that Axel knew that Zexion meant Roxas. He chose not to let onto this.  
  
"…No. No one." Zexion gave a sort of understanding nod, and after a silence Axel responded, in an undertone, as though it would somehow be the same as not saying a thing, "But that's cool of you."  
  
Zexion simply shrugged and packed his book back into his messenger bag. "We'll figure something out later. I just thought I ought to let you know as soon as possible."  
  
"I appreciate it, man. Thanks." But as the man walked away, all Axel could think was, _great. One more thing to worry about._  
  
For a moment he sat, trying to absorb the information. Well, he was fucked. There were no two ways about it. As he rose from his seat, he physically felt heavier. Of course everything would go wrong at once.  
  
As Axel, sighing, finally turned to head back to the library, he caught a strange sight: a man with long, blue hair walking up to the welcome center and disappearing behind the door. For a moment all he could do was stare, questioning his own eyes, and just convince himself he had made it up.  
  
Still, it looked an awful lot like….

_Stop,_ Axel told himself firmly. _Don't even go there._  
  
Shaking his head, he tried to collect his thoughts enough to get himself through the rest of the day.  
  
The rest of the day passed, Roxasless, until (of course) Axel had all but given up hope on solving the situation. It was sheer luck, really. He caught the boy just as he was walking out of the cafeteria-alone- and rushed over. Although he remembered just what kind of reaction he got the last time he did so he couldn't think of any other option: he reached out and took Roxas' shoulder, turning him around and giving him a semi-pleading look when he saw the glare on the boy's face.  
  
"Hear me out," he said, not taking his eyes or hands off the blond. Sighing loudly Roxas nodded, and though his glare faded his expression didn't soften. Roxas followed Axel as he led him to a small secluded area near where he had had the talk with Zexion.  
  
They sat on a short ledge which blocked off a section of shrubs and flowers and Axel vaguely noticed a branch poking the back of his neck, but he was too preoccupied to really care. Another look into Roxas' baby blue eyes caused him to lose his nerve and he remained silent. He noticed the boy beside him starting to unwrap his sandwich and preparing to take a bite, but he set it back in his lap at the last minute. Axel glanced over, catching him sigh again, rewrap his sandwich, and set it next to him. He turned to him and began to sign.  
  
 _"Well, what do you want? You're interrupting my lunch."_  
  
" _Sorry,_ " Axel responded, and figured that was the best way to start. _"I'm sorry about the other day. I shouldn't have gotten so mad at you."_  
  
 _"I still don't know what happened. You picked a fight with me for no reason."_  
  
 _"I know, and I'm sorry."_ Roxas began to eat but kept his eyes on the redhead, so he took that as a cue to keep going. _"I saw the way you were talking to your friends and I just… I felt like an idiot. I couldn't keep up and I felt like… like you did that to me on purpose."_ The incredulous look Roxas sent his way said everything Axel needed to know, and it eased some of the aching from the pit of his stomach. _"And then when you told your friend I wasn't your boyfriend… I thought we were headed that way."_ A long pause. _"I thought I kind of was."_  
  
Roxas made him wait an agonizing three minutes as he finished the last few bites of his meal and licked his fingers clean.

_"You're an idiot,"_ he said simply. _"Of course we sign better than you, Hayner and I have known it all our lives and Pence has been doing this since junior high school."_ Axel mentally cringed. That little fact had hardly occurred to him, and he'd found out next to nothing about the portly kid who had sat across from him. Hadn't really tried to. _"Look, you're really good, and you improved so much since I met you… you aren't just going by what the books say anymore. You're really getting that it's your words and your face and a hundred little factors that make me able to understand you. I wouldn't have invited you if I thought you couldn't hold your own. I guess I sort of forgot you've only been doing this for a few months."_  
  
"…Thanks."  
  
Roxas rolled his eyes and snorted, shaking his head. _"Stupid."_

Then he did the last thing Axel would have ever expected: he placed his small, pale hands on Axel's shoulders, pulled him close, and kissed him. A glorious, merciful, honest-to-God open-mouthed, lip-sucking, tongues-brushing, pull-back-for-air kind of kiss.  
  
When Roxas broke away, he dropped his hands onto Axel's lap, which the man was quick to cup and squeeze and gently rub with his thumbs. Distracted far too soon, Roxas pulled his hands from Axel's grasp and motioned to a white half sheet of paper which had slid from under Axel's bag and landed on the ground.  
  
 _"What's that?"_  
  
 _"Nothing,"_ Axel responded quickly, reaching down to grab it. _"It's nothing. My rent was raised. That's all."_  
  
Roxas winced slightly in sympathy at the news. _"Can you still manage it?"_  
  
 _"Yeah, if I magically get a better job."_ He shrugged. _"I can handle it. Worse comes to worst my roommate's loaded, so I might get him to take a bit more of the rent for me until I can get everything under control. Then I'll just pay him back when I can. No big deal."_  
  
 _"…Or you could move in with me,"_ Roxas said. For a moment all Axel could do was stare blankly ahead, wondering if he had seen that right or if he had misunderstood somehow.  
  
 _"…Did you just ask me to move in with you?"_ He expected an irritated, "did I stutter, bitch?" look from the boy. Instead, Roxas simply offered a shy, timid smile and nodded.  
  
 _"My place is all paid for, so you'd just have to help me cover basic-"_ Something. Axel hated not being fluent. Roxas seemed to tell from the look on Axel's face that he was lost, so generously spelled out the word he meant: utilities and Axel nodded. _"Utilities. Things. Whatever."_ He paused for a moment, glancing up at Axel as if seeking approval before continuing on his own. _"Besides, if you're going to be my boyfriend, it makes sense, doesn't it?"_  
  
 _"But I…"_ A brief smile crossed his face at a semi-personal thought as he continued. _"I mean, we hardly know each other."_  
  
A more serious look crossed the younger boy's face, but it didn't completely replace his smile. _"I figure you stay with me and we see where we go. If we end up friends, great, and if we're together for a year and you decide you can't stand me it gives you the chance to at least save up to get a new place… I'm not going to kick you out if this doesn't work. I promise you that."_  
  
Axel grinned. _"Who said this won't work?"_ For the first time since they made up, Roxas scowled. The expression lasted for hardly a second, but Axel caught it. It wasn't enough to kill the mood, of course- Axel didn't think a single thing could happen after this that would bring him down-but it was enough to make him wonder. To doubt.  
  
He didn't like it.  
  
And of course, like any responsible adult, Axel knew already that this was a problem. Roxas's whole "this will be hard" thing was probably going to put a damper on anything long term, if it came to that. He'd have to pry at times, have to get whatever Roxas' insecurities were out in the open, and in doing so, Axel would probably have to reveal a few unsavory details of his own life. That was okay. He just wanted them to get to a point where they really-really-felt like they knew each other.

Basically, he had to go find Olette.  
  
Fortunately, Axel knew that wouldn't be hard to do. See, there were times in Axel's life where he knew he'd gotten lucky.  
  
Somehow finding himself stumbling into popularity in his preteens was probably the start of it. To say Axel hadn't had a lot of money growing up was a bit of an understatement-hell, he still didn't have a lot of money-and the fact that he had a big mouth most of the time didn't exactly help him to fit in, either. It was Saix, really, who made him who he had been. Who he was ashamed to be now. Rich, cool, calculating, Saix. Saix, the police chief's son, who could get away with anything. Saix, his best friend for far too many years, who told him that he should get those purple tattoos under his eyes and convinced him that "Axel" was a much, much better name than "Lea".  
  
Well, he had been right there, at least. For once.  
  
Then there was the fact that he had somehow managed to get enough scholarship money to ensure that he could actually get to college in the first place. Axel still wasn't entirely sure how that happened-he wasn't the best student and, to be honest, his writing skills were lackluster and there was the small issue of the fact that he had absolutely no sense of direction in life. And yet, the April of 2004, a month after he miraculously received his letter of acceptance to Twilight Town State (over Saix, who had not been happy about that little detail one bit), the letters stating he had received fifty, a hundred, a thousand dollars arrived.  
  
The third lucky thing, certainly not the last of it he was sure, but what immediately popped into his head during reflection, was the fact that where ever he went, Olette didn't seem to be too far away.

 

  
  
It in was the convenience store by the campus, again, that he ran into her again for the first time in a while.  
  
"Still looking for a new, exciting energy drink?" he couldn't help but ask once again as he silently watched her pull a can from the refrigerator, read through the ingredients, and go to put it back. She gave a startled jump and dropped the can, which made a horrible, shrill sound as it hit the linoleum. She quickly reached down to get it, sighing as she inspected the huge dent that had formed right over the brand logo and put it back, behind six other cans. "…You'd think I would know not to do that by now."  
  
There was an awkward moment where Olette didn't respond, simply staring up and grinning at the red-haired man. The moment lasted until Axel found himself more than a little uncomfortable; he felt like a used car.

"Roxas told me about the big news! I didn't realize you guys were officially together." _Neither did I_ , Axel wanted to respond, but he bit his tongue and nodded instead. "When are you moving in?"  
  
"Next month. My roommate's already found someone to move in to our apartment, so it's just a matter of letting them get situated. Then I'm gone."  
  
"Are you excited?"  
  
Axel wasn't sure why he hesitated. "…Yeah, I am."  
  
For the first time, her grin faded. "You don't sound excited." In all the time it took for him to make the smallest move or even acknowledge the statement, Olette almost repeated herself. Before she could speak, however, he shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed, scowling at the ground.  
  
"He keeps acting like we're only going to last a month before I'll want to move out."  
  
Olette frowned at this, too. "I know he likes you, Axel. I don't know what he's talking about. He's just-"  
  
"No, you're not listening to me. He keeps acting like I'm going to get sick of him and want to move out, got it memorized?" Caught up in his lingering frustration, his last two thoughts were delivered like a single thought, as though he were afraid of interruption. "We've been together for two weeks, it's driving me crazy… he says he's kidding but I don't buy it, and he won't talk to me about anything."  
  
This time it was Olette who didn't make a move, frozen in place, brows furrowed in thought and eyes moving as though she were reading an absorbing book. "You know who you need to talk to?" She said quickly, forcing it out so she couldn't change her mind. "You should go find Naminé, she'll be back down with her boyfriend next weekend to visit her hometown. It's not far from here." Quickly she thrust her purse in front of her, unzipping it rapidly and pulling out a small pad of notebook paper. She kicked up her knee and placed her bag there for balance as she searched for a pen. Axel looked over her shoulder as she opened several zippered compartments and pockets that, logically, should not have been able to fit anything that small. He was half-convinced that women were magic, because that was the only way anyone could possibly fit so many things in such a small space.  
  
She made a relieved sound as she finally found a pen, fat and green and half the size of a normal pen—no wonder she had a hell of a time finding it amongst a sea of gum wrappers, cosmetics, and what looked like a few Swiss army knives and a tape measure.

"So, here's her number," she said, jotting down ten numbers with blinding speed and tearing the paper from the book. "Give her a call, tell her I sent you." She threw both the pen and the notepad back in her purse carelessly and yanked the caught zipper until it would move, closing her purse and letting it fall back to her side. "I have class in a half hour, so I really need to get back to my dorm to get ready." She glanced back into the refrigerator giving Axel a deathly serious look. "Call her. Naminé's known Roxas a lot longer than I have. She'll know how to help."  
  
Axel said nothing as she opened the door again to root through the drinks, staring down at the acid green ink staining the notebook paper in his hand.  
  
Finally, after she had picked something seemingly at random, he said, "Go for Demon. I drank that my junior year and pulled all-nighters like it was nothing." Smiling, Olette tightened her grip on the can she was holding and absently threw it in the air, caught it one-handed, and repeated the motion several times.  
  
"Yeah, take your advice a second time? I don't think so." She turned, laughing, and went off to the nearest cash register. Axel stalked off in the opposite direction to grab the bagels he once again needed. He passed through the aisles of wine and beer and nice ciders, bags of chocolate and energy bars, mindlessly finding his way to an end cap near what started the cold and flu section of the store. Someone must have been there before him-his favorite brand was wiped nearly clean. And the prices had been bumped up fifty cents.  
  
Axel was starting to wonder if everyone in the world was conspiring against him, just to make him feel as shitty as possible about being totally broke. Maybe the bagel manufacturer, store owner, and his (soon to be ex-) landlords all knew each other and hated him for some inexplicable reason, and they were all plotting to slowly raise the prices of the few things he could actually afford until he was forced to get an actual long-term job.  
  
Man, the real world sucked.  
  
It was Roxas, he decided, walking up to the register and setting his food down by the register. It was Roxas making him get all worked up over really stupid things that didn't matter. What the hell did he care if the price of bagels went up less than a dollar, he was essentially gaining free housing. And hopefully that meant that he could splurge more on food; if he never had a bagel or anything remotely bready again in his life, he wouldn't exactly mourn the loss.  
  
But he had a solution now, maybe, to the Roxas problem. If Naminé proved to be less vague and cryptic than Olette, then he would be good to go. Of course he'd much rather hear it from the boy himself, but that didn't look like it was happening anytime soon, and Axel would at least like to have the comfort that he wasn't moving in with the world's tiniest axe murderer or something. Really, in the few weeks since Roxas had asked him to move in, they'd hung out a few times in settings that were maybe-maybe-not real dates, and they'd made out a handful of times. And that was about the long and the short of it. It would be really fucking nice to know just what the hell Olette had meant when she said, half a year ago, _relationships like yours don't tend to last very long_ , and when mere months ago Roxas clarified that _it would be hard to be friends._  
  
Still, life moved. It tends to. And Axel couldn't wait until every factor in his life was working in his favor to act. He was just going to take everything as it came and see how it all worked out.


	7. Moving In and Moving On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once they take the next step together, Axel and Roxas realize how little they really know each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea what's going on with AO3, so sorry about the false update and any possible weird formatting. If anyone catches anything, let me know and I'll try to fix it. :/

Moving day was circled in bright red ink on Roxas's calendar. He had offered to go over and give Axel a hand with packing, but he had insisted on doing it by himself. That left Roxas alone, watching the clock, wondering if he'd be okay to head out and grab a bite to eat or if Axel would need to be let in. He had meant to get Axel a key during the week prior, but his schedule had clashed with Axel's every single day of it. He'd had a presentation to give and needed to practice during his lunch hour with the girl who had volunteered to translate for him. He was lucky Olette knew so many people, really, or else he'd never have those kinds of connections.

12:30.

Roxas went to pick up his phone then stopped. If Axel was in the middle of packing, there was no real use in texting him. He probably wouldn't respond.

His mind drifted back to Olette for a moment. She had offered to keep company. Maybe he should have let her. Still, if Axel was going to be his boyfriend, it was better they have this time alone. He needed to sit and stew without anyone to reassure him that everything was going to be okay, because it was going to be okay.

He needed to work on the whole "having faith in others" thing. He didn't know Axel very well, he knew that, but he felt like Axel could be trusted. He had a good feeling about it.

Well, he had a good feeling about the last one, too, but…

12:47.

Axel said he'd be done by three if he slept through his alarm, but he'd probably get an early enough start to get done by noon, and then they could go out to lunch.

Roxas just needed to send a text. He knew that.

Still, he was starting to get used to being disappointed. It was easier to assume he was going to be let down than to actually have a say in what was going on; he wasn't sure what that said about his attitude about life.

But, he finally had to reason, it's not like I'm going to get stood up on a date. Axel has no other place to go. He isn't going to treat this lightly.

What he needed to do was chill the fuck out. 

He reached past his phone and over to the TV remote, flipping the TV on and mindlessly turning through channels until he found one that wasn't on a commercial break; it took him several cycles, having only fifteen channels. Well, twelve in English. He supposed with Axel, that would change. Sighing heavily he switched on the subtitles, but he didn't pay much attention. He lip-read where he could, but he really didn't care about what was going on. Really, it was just a matter of needing to look at something other than the blank wall ahead of him.

The doorbell rang at 2:30, but of course he didn't hear it.

On the other side of the door, Axel was kicking himself for being such a dumbass. He rang the fucking doorbell. Good going.

Setting down his suitcase, an old shopping bag full of food from the kitchen that he knew Zexion wouldn't miss, and his backpack, he rooted through his jacket pockets for his phone. He sent Roxas six blank texts, hoping that he'd realize it was his replacement for the doorbell and let him in--while thinking that they really should have planned this out better.

Luckily for him, Roxas came to the door right away, leaving Axel standing stunned for a moment as he watched the boy-his boyfriend-grab the suitcase, which was nearly as tall as Roxas and almost totally full, and yank with all his might. The suitcase tilted back onto its wheels and he gave it a firm tug to hoist it over the small step up into the door. A little wide-eyed from the fact that a kid who was probably just five feet tall could apparently pull extreme amounts of dead weight, Axel couldn't help but wonder if that were some sort of symbolic joke being played on him by the same deity that decided to raise bagel prices by… twenty percent? Fifteen percent? Something like that. Bastards.

A pillow coming into contact with his face swiftly knocked him out of his thoughts.

He winced and reeled back, almost falling off the step up to Roxas's door. His door.

For the first time, the gravity of the situation and all that it meant really seemed to hit him.

What on earth was he doing?

Seven months ago Axel had spotted this boy, this beautiful, smart, infuriating boy, in a club and left in frustration, feeling as though he'd been blown off like he was nothing. And, honestly, sometimes Roxas still gave him that impression. At best, Axel had expected to have a brief, whirlwind romance with the boy, impress him with some rudimentary sign language skills, sleep with him, and then most likely break up as Axel graduated and moved out of Twilight Town and on with his life.

But none of those things had happened, and now, here he was, on his and Roxas's shared doorstep, finding that he was still as confused as the day they met.

Taking a deep breath, Axel took a step in.

Roxas's condo was everything Axel expected it to be—or, at least, it would have been had the man given it any true thought. White and clean, every once in a while the starkness of the place was broken up by a funky lamp or sudden burst of color; a painting, a picture frame, a pile of clothes.

It was a little too clean for him but hey, he could fix that.

Still, it sort of added to the horrible feeling that Axel was getting, that he was an unwanted visitor, a foreign entity. He'd never so much as seen the inside of Roxas's place before this, after all, and Roxas wasn't exactly accommodating. He dropped his bags, stepping to the side as his large rolling suitcase toppled to the floor, the impact muffled by soft carpet.

 _"Where should I put these?"_ he asked.

Roxas, who had been standing in the corner like a non-presence since Axel had entered the building, uncrossed his arms only to point down the hall. There, at the other end, was a spacious master bedroom, the contents of which Axel couldn't quite tell from where he was standing. He craned his neck to get a better look; he could make out the corner of a bed. Roxas, finally leaving his place by the door, entered the man's sight.

 _"I didn't think you'd mind sharing,"_ Roxas stated, the look on his face inscrutable.

 _"Well, I'm your boyfriend, aren't I?"_ Axel waved the statement off with a smile, grabbed the lighter of his bags, and sauntered off to his new bedroom. Behind him, Roxas grabbed his rolling luggage and wrestled it across the hall. _"I could have handled that, you know!"_ A little embarrassed for reasons he couldn't be quite sure of, Axel wrenched the suitcase from Roxas's hands as soon as he noticed Roxas’s struggle, dragging both across the floor behind him.

"It's fine."

"…Right." Axel muttered aloud. "Well." Then, not having a clue what else he could or should do, he let the case fall to the ground and, somewhat awkwardly, took Roxas by the shoulders. Gave him a kiss on the lips. Roxas made a surprisingly loud sound and pulled back, and Axel... just tried not to take it too personally. He hadn't really expected Roxas to take the initiative in the first place; knew that he had been the one to push and push and push, the one who had taken things a bit further, he just needed Roxas to give him a reason, a confirmation, and he wasn't planning on that changing anytime soon.

Well, they'd make it work. Somehow.

At the sound of a distinct growling, Axel stepped back. He caught Roxas clutching his stomach and shooting him a weak grin. _"I haven't eaten all day. Let's go grab some lunch."_

"Sounds good to me," Axel said; Roxas had already turned around, taken his keys from the top of his dresser, and slid on a pair of shoes.

 

The mood was considerably lighter once they got back home. The fast food place they settled with wasn't exactly romantic we've-just-moved-in-together material but it did the job. Roxas was almost chatty as they settled back in at home and he was near-cheerful as he helped Axel unpack and reorganized his room to accommodate a second person's belongings. Whatever hidden, dark thing that had been on the blond's mind had obviously faded—that, or Roxas just got really grumpy on an empty stomach.

Axel mentally filed that particular idea away, just in case bribery ever became necessary.

Sometime in the evening, when things were completely placed onto shelves and tucked into drawers, they settled on the couch for a cheaply produced TV movie and some snacking. The subtitles were distracting to Axel—he could understand the actors, dammit, why did he feel the need to read the words, too—but he'd get used to it in time. It took forty-five minutes of awkward shifting, of figuring out how close to sit or whether to touch, but Roxas and Axel finally ended up half-laying on the couch, Axel propping up his head with an elbow on the armrest, Roxas's head on Axel's shoulder as he wrapped his free arm around the blond's torso. Again the oddness of the situation struck Axel, suddenly and without warning.

_“At this rate we’re gonna be married before we hit second base.”_

Roxas pulled away. _"Did you say something?"_

_"…No."_

Best to pretend that snarky little comment never escaped his lips.

Dinner was quiet. But then, maybe that was to be expected. Aside from the obvious reasons, the two men were exhausted from a day filled with lifting, reorganizing, and—in Axel's case—rushed, frantic packing of everything he owned and near-immediate unpacking of just as much. The extended TV rest hadn't helped much, either, only leaving them more tired than before. The comfort of the couch teased them with the prospect of sleep, a promise too soon yanked away as Roxas insisted on them fixing an actual meal for dinner. Avocado soup with shrimp—both of which weren't quite in season yet, which meant they had probably been imported from the islands. Which meant that they were probably expensive as hell, and way above Axel's budget. He supposed, with mingled discomfort and a feeling of unwarranted victory, that this was the way things were going to be from now on.

He had to admit, he wasn't exactly going to miss the TV dinners, although Roxas was about as chatty as Zexion. …Well, to be fair, the necessity of using one's hand to hold silverware sort of hindered Roxas's ability to speak too clearly. So when he stole a glance up at his boyfriend, Axel took his chance. _"Dinner is good. I haven't had home cooking in a long time."_

 _"Good,"_ Roxas replied, then swallowed, coughing a little. _"…Not that you haven't had real food. That's not so good."_

 _"What, questionable meat products and lumpy potatoes can qualify as real food, you know."_ His sarcasm must have translated particularly well, for Roxas broke out into a grin and laughed, loud and uninhibited and natural. Axel loved the sound. _"So, how come I've never heard you laugh like that before now, Zombie?"_

_"Maybe you're just not all that funny."_

_"Hey now! You're going to hurt my delicate feelings."_

_"Yeah, and I guess I wouldn't want to lose my shrimp de-sheller, right?"_

Axel feigned shock and the highest offense. _"Is that all I'm good for?"_

 _"Why do you think I asked you to move in with me,"_ Roxas responded wryly. _"For the conversation?"_

_"Trust me, once we get in bed you'll change your tune."_

Roxas's face was once again hard to read and the smile he used to cover the moment of uncertainty wasn't a convincing one.

…Huh. Wrong thing to say.

_"…Sorry."_

_"You didn't say anything wrong."_ But both of them knew that wasn't quite true. They ate the rest of their meal in peace before Roxas excused himself to study for an upcoming test. They regrouped close to midnight for bed, but neither of them spoke about what had happened at dinner.

Olette was right. If Axel wanted answers, he would have to go to Naminé.

 

He set up a Sunday, the last Sunday of Spring break, to meet with her. He told Roxas he was going to see an old friend as he kissed the blond on the cheek and set off. Roxas offered the use of his own car for the day, but Axel missed his piece of shit and found himself glad to be behind the wheel after a week of a very indoors vacation.

He slid into his car, tossing a thick jacket onto the passenger's seat, and shoved his key into the ignition. He waited for a couple of seconds before turning it, not entirely surprised when the engine started, sputtered, and died. He had the feeling it was going to lash out at him for ignoring it for so long, but he had already decided that there was no way in hell he was taking Roxas's car. Period. A man had to have some form of independence, after all. He turned off the ignition and once again let it sit; the second time fared better, the old hunk of metal actually stayed on long enough for Axel to realize that he had no gas—which didn't exactly help his cause—high-tail it to the gas station, and head out.

Well, at least he was mobile.

Sort of.

It took him a bit less than an hour and a half to get to Roxas's hometown, thanks to light traffic and Axel's familiarity with the county. Despite the fact that the visit with Roxas was his first time in the suburb, he knew of the place and surrounding areas well enough to be able to get there and back with little trouble.

So that was score one for Axel.

He met the girl in the back of a small diner, under the shade of a large umbrella at a plain black table. She was pretty, petite and blonde with light blue eyes, sipping a lemonade as she thumbed through a magazine.

"…Naminé?" Axel said, leaning over the metal fence meant to keep non-customers like him out. She glanced up from her article and smiled, giving a slight nod.

"You must be Axel. I'll meet you around front."

"No need." And with that, Axel jumped the railing and pulled the seat across from her out from under the table, throwing his keys and wallet on it as he sat.

"I ordered without you, sorry. I'll bring the waiter around."

Axel shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "Nah, I'm not that hungry."

"Are you sure?" It was at that moment that Axel realized two things—one, Naminé suddenly looked very familiar and he couldn't figure out why, and two, there was a sort of slight thickness to her speech, a minor version of the way Roxas sounded their first time alone together, when Axel dropped off Roxas at his place and the boy looked at him and said "thank you". The first and last words he'd ever said out loud.

He looked up from his keys just as Naminé brushed her hair behind her ear, revealing for a moment just a glimpse of a flesh-colored hearing aide. Axel wasn't quite sure whether or not to ask about it. Fortunately for him, the girl seemed to notice the way his eye lingered and again smiled patiently.

"I was born deaf into a deaf family. My parents chose to let me get a cochlear implant when I was eight. I think that's why Roxas and I get along so well. His entire family is hearing. Neither of us really belong to either world."

Yep, there it was. The instant uneasy feeling that Axel knew he'd get in the pit of his stomach, the one that was telling him to get the hell away from these people, that he was hardly equipped enough to handle his own life, let alone attempt to learn all about someone else's. He knew that was going to turn up sooner or later.

"Bet that went over well," Axel replied, and it seemed to take Naminé a second to understand exactly just what he was implying.

"…Yeah, a lot of my relatives and family friends disapproved. It's like turning your back on a community that cared for you." She shrugged. "But in the end, it was my choice and they accepted it because they love me.” Axel nodded, thinking. Yeah, he knew that the deaf world was pretty exclusive. If what he'd seen of the cliques at his school hadn't tipped him off, Hayner's reaction to his presence in Roxas's life, period, had more than let him know just how unwanted he was. "But we're here to talk about Roxas, aren't we?"

"…Right."

The smile she gave him was a guilty, knowing smile. It slightly reminded Axel of a toddler who'd taken one too many cookies from the jar and was trying to cute her way out of punishment. 

"And I'm guessing he doesn't know you're here." Axel snorted.

"Look, if Roxas would ever talk to me about anything I wouldn't even be here. Uh, no offense." Regardless whether the comment had fazed her, she jumped right into Axel's much-needed exposition. 

"I met Roxas when I was fourteen at a late church service. I think he's taken you there before, so you know that the last service has an interpreter, so the majority of attendees are deaf or hard of hearing. It was Roxas's first time there and…." She sighed, deep in thought for a moment. "He was just so happy to be there. He'd gone to public school all his life so he was treated like an outcast. No one really bothered with him. When he met us, it was the first time he had ever belonged. That really opened his eyes. He could go back to school, back into the hearing world where he--we-- would be treated like we were defective or lacking. But every Sunday, from ten to eleven, we all belonged. We all fit in. It didn’t matter where we came from, if we’d been submerged in the deaf community all our lives or if we had nowhere else to go, like Roxas. Roxas got to belong, I got to be surrounded by my culture, have a sense of identity... Hayner used to tell me I didn't count but… " She smiled again, rolling her eyes in a half-serious manner. "That's Hayner."

"Yeah," Axel cut in, scowling and directing his eyes down to the table. "He made it pretty obvious I wasn't really wanted. But whatever. Not like I took it to heart or anything." Too much, anyway. Just enough to almost ruin a friendship, is all. 

Naminé smiled knowingly as Axel shrugged. He almost wondered if she could sense his heightening discomfort; his fight with Roxas was something he didn't like to reflect on much. He'd overreacted and, in hindsight, his display had been sort of embarrassing. He and Roxas hadn't spoken of it since they had made up and honestly, Axel had the tendency to pretend it never happened. But, of course, it did.

"He's very, very territorial,” she said. “...and he feels the need to protect what he thinks is his. He's a good guy. He'll warm up to you, and if he doesn't… it's not a big deal. But if it matters, I think if you could win Roxas over that quickly, you can probably get along with anyone."

Axel snorted. "Yeah well, that's just great. Now that I know how to get in with Roxas's friends, maybe someday I'll actually figure out how to get Roxas to act like he knows me." As soon as the words escaped, Axel wished he could have unsaid them.

"…Sorry," Naminé said, a little bashfully. "I know you didn't ask."

"Nonono, it's fine. All the information I can get, right?"

That brought the natural, easy smile back to her face. "Right. So… what did you want to know? I'll try and answer as honestly as I can."

"Why does everyone keep telling me that Roxas and I won't last? What the hell happened to him that he won't tell me?" Okay, so Axel was exaggerating slightly. Still, it was worth it for the sort of seat-shiftingly uncomfortable look she gave him; the one that said that she would tell him everything he needed to know. Bingo.

"You have to understand that Roxas… well, this is all really new to him. As far as I know, he's never really been a relationship with—well, with another guy. I think him just realizing he liked you was weird for him, okay? I also think it must be hard, because he’s best friends with someone who’so very Deaf pride and unwelcoming to outsiders, and because he’s become really mistrustful of people... I think Roxas just isn’t sure that he’s doing the right thing."

"Naminé," Axel urged. "What happened to him? What made him stop trusting people?"

"...It was about a year after Roxas was introduced into our church. A new girl had turned up, and it was one of those love-at-first-sight things. Her name was Xion. She was deaf, too, and she had had a very traumatic experience at her old school because of it. One day she showed up at church, still reeling from what had happened and hoping to go somewhere she would be safe. She wouldn't communicate with anyone, would hardly respond to anyone… except for Roxas. I still don't know what happened to her, but whatever it was, Roxas helped her through it. They were inseparable. He loved her."

"Then something happened," Axel added, brows knit.

"They were together for years and years and then… she dumped him. It was very out of the blue." Naminé looked up; their eyes met. "She left him for a hearing boy."

"…Oh."

"Roxas was absolutely devastated. I don't think I can even describe what that did to him. That she was so incredibly harmed by a hearing boy and Roxas was the one who was there, who brought her into a place of belonging… and then it was as though she just bounced back one day. And then she was gone." The girl sighed, her voice catching, and took a long sip of her drink. Axel appreciated the silence. He had to absorb what he'd just heard.

So it wasn't anything a guy had done to him. Now he was beginning to understand why Naminé had given him all of what he thought were extraneous details. His girlfriend left him for a hearing boy; Roxas would have felt betrayed, like he wasn't good enough, like she found someone better. Hayner was probably the first one to comfort him, and he would say something about community ties, about keeping yourself safe.... Hurt beyond belief, Roxas would agree, and maybe he’d think that it’d be best to retreat from others, and to stay safe in the deaf world. 

And then everything changed, and he would be left to wonder if he wasn't just as bad as Xion.

In his own, bizarre way Axel could relate. The people who turned him down for not having enough money. Gaining status. Turning down people for a plethora of small reasons. Becoming what you hate, becoming what hurt you in the past. Being forced to reevaluate every step you've ever taken.  
In Roxas's case, the addition of insult to injury… the love of your life leaving you.

Yeah, suddenly Axel understood everything. Roxas made perfect sense.

"Shit. I wouldn't even have guessed… what the hell, why would she do that to him?"

"She didn't love him anymore," Naminé said simply, voice gentle. "That's not something you can control. I can't blame her for doing what she did, and it's better that she dumped him than just string him along but… I just wish—" she sighed heavily once more, staring down at her lap. For a moment, Axel was afraid she was going to start crying. "I just wish I could see Roxas whole again. He means so much to me, to Olette, to all of us, and I just can't stand seeing him like this."

"Naminé," Axel said, reaching over the table and taking her hand. "Don't you worry about it. Roxas isn't broken—not for good. He won't be hurting anymore when I'm through with him, got it memorized?" Then he stood, grabbing his keys and wallet and saying a brief farewell. As he was preparing to hop the short fence again, Naminé took his hand.

"Axel?" she responded. "Never be through with him." At that Axel couldn't think of a single response. He thought the smile they shared said it all, anyway.

 

 

Mission: heal-Roxas-with-the-power-of-love saw a rocky start.

Axel was halfway home—almost, almost there… and then it happened. The inevitable. The thing he'd been waiting on, dreading, denying, for so many years.

His car broke down.

Fortunately when he heard it start to sputter, he was able to get out of the fast lane and into a safe place for his car to promptly roll over and die.  
Metaphorically, of course.

Well, that settled it.

Axel was fucked.

Metaphorically. Unfortunately.

Fruitlessly he slid back into the front seat; he knew that throwing the keys back in the ignition wouldn't do a damn thing, but it was at least a try.

...Yeah, nothing. It didn't even try to start. And he had plenty of gas.

Baby was gone.

For a moment, all Axel could do was curl up in his seat. It was like an emotional blow—all his money and effort to restore this thing, and it went and left him stranded in the middle of nowhere. It was a betrayal. Too bad inanimate objects don't have a sense of loyalty.

Damn it.  
Fuck.

Then the worst of it hit him: he would have to call Roxas to pick him up. His meeting with Namine had taken him in the exact opposite direction than he told Roxas he’d be heading in, so his cover’d be blown for sure. He could come up with some cover-up story, but what then? When would the lying ever stop?

He was officially, hopelessly fucked.

He blew it. Roxas would be inconsolably pissed, and Axel would have to sit through the most agonizing hour of his life, riding in total silence in the passenger’s seat, before beginning a house hunt. If Roxas didn't outright kill him, that is.

Shit, they hadn't been together a week.

Five minutes passed, then ten, and still he sat, his knees drawn to his chest, staring blankly out of the window ahead. Beside him, cars were passing at 60 miles per hour. Families were returning home after a day of shopping, friends were heading to the beach. And Axel had just ended his own life. He tried to think of something he could do, anything, anyone else he could call, any way to get his car going. But after twenty minutes he realized he was wasting what little time he had left. If he wanted to get home by the time he said he'd be back, he needed to get going soon.

Sighing and utterly defeated in every possible way, he pulled his phone from his back pocket.

Well, better get it over with.

_Roxas, you there?_

It took a moment, but his phone vibrated with a response.

_Yeah what's up?_

_I'm stuck on North. car broke down. I need you to come get me._

A long pause. Axel's phone buzzed. 

_I thought you were going down to see your friend in Traverse Town, that's the other way_

He sighed again before answering, shifting for the first time; with an increasing sense of urgency to get this all over with, he pulled his other arm over where he had some point rested it on the window next to him and began typing with both hands.

_Yeah, I know. Come get me. Next exit where I'm at is the Plaza rd_

An even longer pause. Axel almost had the time to wonder if Roxas would just leave him out there for however long. The response, however, assured him that worrying was stupid: _be there in 45 minutes. dont move._ Roxas probably grabbed his keys, some shoes, and jumped in his car before responding. And now he was on his way.

Axel typed _ha, ha_ but didn't send it.

 

The wait was agonizing, and the more he sat and thought about it, the more shitty he felt about the whole thing. He shouldn't have gone behind Roxas' back like that. He shouldn’t have been so hasty, so decisive. He shouldn’t have invaded Roxas’s privacy, should have just listened and known when to back off.

He was still kicking himself when he saw Roxas' silver vehicle drive past,exit, and, a few minutes later, reemerge on the correct side to pull over.

Watching Roxas climb out of his somewhat tall car was a reminder of just how tiny the boy was. Axel didn't know why that was the thought that popped out of his head and stuck with him, but it was.

 _"Did you call someone to tow that thing?"_ Roxas asked immediately, to Axel’s relief. They could put off the inevitable fight until a little later. Now it was time to get to business.

_“…Oh. Shit. No. I didn't think of it."_

_"Great. Wonderful."_

_"I'll go ahead and get on it."_

_"You do that."_

They didn't speak as they waited for help to show, and when the truck came, Roxas stood in the background as Axel talked the guys who would take the piece of junk away for good.

 

So.

Axel lied to him.

Roxas didn't think any amount of explaining would help the situation. He didn't care what was going on, he really didn't. All he cared about, all he could wrap his mind around, was that Axel had lied to him, absolutely shamelessly, right to his face.

Typical. So freaking typical.

He turned from his place against the passenger door of his car, walked around it, and, in his endless frustration, nearly threw himself back into the drivers' seat. He made a loud, irritated noise, almost a yelp, as he slammed the door shut. It earned strange looks from Axel and the two men he was talking to, but Roxas couldn't bring himself to give a shit. He needed to do something to get some of that excess annoyance out, and anything short of outright punching something would do the job just fine. For a moment he wondered if his cry would have been more satisfying if he could hear it, but the thought went away as soon as it came, leaving the boy wondering where it came from in the first place.

Slowly, Roxas began to realize that, if he wanted to get them both home in one piece, he'd need to calm down—or else he'd drive like a maniac. Olette tended to tell him to just breathe deep, count to ten, and think about his surroundings when he started to get into one of these moods, but to be honest, Roxas sort of thought the whole thing was bullshit. He loved Olette, he really, really did. When she came to their church one day a few years back, already fluent in sign and expressing wishes to become an interpreter, to understand the culture more, Roxas was the first one to welcome her with open arms, even amidst all the Xion drama. Not that the others were far behind… well, there were stragglers. Hayner came to mind.

But still. She always had the tendency to think that Roxas was much more delicate than he really was. They had met at a bad time in Roxas's life. One he struggled to pull through. But he was fine, he was a grown man, he didn't need to be protected, to be consoled and reassured and told that everything would be okay if he just let it.

…Maybe right now, though, he could’ve used it a little. Mentally rolling his eyes, he took a deep breath.

One, two. The ground below him was dry, dust and dirt. Bright in the sun and spotted with weeds. It would make way for concrete and tall buildings if he kept going in the same direction, or grass and fields, trains and clock towers if he went back. Then, the beach. 

Three, four. On the other side of the ramp was a restaurant he always meant to get over to, one his parents said he used to love when he was little. Behind it he could make out a shopping center; a pharmacy, an arts and crafts store, a clothing outlet and a furniture store. 

Five, six. Above him, the sky was a perfect beach weather blue, even if the air was a little on the cold side. The sun was high in the sky. Without looking at the clock he guessed it was in the three o'clock hour. Seven, eight. He was tired and hungry. 

Nine, ten. The car was being loaded onto the truck's flat bed. Axel was almost, almost done. He shot Roxas an infuriatingly confident smile.Roxas didn't realize that Axel was only barely keeping himself together; maybe that would’ve lifted his mood a little.

After all was said and done, as the car was to be taken to its final resting place, Axel finally began to head over. He was noticeably rattled. Maybe if Roxas had been paying attention, he would have seen that. But as it was, he was too lost in his own thoughts.

Still wrapped up in more thoughts of his own than he could count, Axel pulled the passenger door open and slid in. After he noticed that Roxas had been watching as he shifted the seat back for more leg space and buckled in, he tried to come up with something to say. 

What came out was, _"I can't believe it's really gone."_ He couldn't quite meet Roxas' eyes.

Right, Roxas thought indignantly, shoving the keys into the ignition and tearing back onto the highway.

"Shit!" Axel yelled as he was thrown against the door. "What the hell, Roxas?" Never looking back at Axel, Roxas took a hand from the wheel to quickly spell S-O-R-R-Y, as though he had heard Axel's exclamation. "Shit," he repeated, irritation heightened by the adrenaline rush from Roxas' stupid stunt. "Crazy fuck."

Knowing there was no point in staying alert, Axel snuggled down into his sweatshirt and rested his head against the window. He let his eyes droop shut, trying not to dwell on the task that lay ahead, and before he knew it, Roxas was slamming the car door and heading inside their condo. 

"Wow," Axel muttered as he struggled to bring himself into full consciousness, clumsily undoing his seat belt. "Thanks for waking me." He wondered if that was Roxas's not-so-subtle way of kicking him out and found that his sense of dread had heightened tenfold as he approached the door. Axel sort of hated himself for having the ability to feel right at that moment.

The front door was unlocked; that was a good sign, at least. And there Roxas was, right on the couch, staring at his phone and most likely pretending to text. Taking a cue from the last time he'd snuck up on the boy, Axel quickly flicked the light switch on and off to notify the blond of his presence. He then took a seat on the couch and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

All in all it took ten minutes for Roxas to finally look back at him, and when he did, he asked one simple question: "why?"

A million stories flashed through Axel's head—he got lost, he took the wrong exit, he wasn't thinking—but the truth seemed to be a pretty good place to start. 

_"I never had plans to visit a friend."_

_"I guessed."_

_"I went to talk to Naminé. You seemed so down about this whole relationship thing, I just wanted to know what was going on. What had made you be like this."_

_"Axel—"_

_"Hey, I get it now, okay?"_

_"Axel!"_

_"Listen, I know it must be hard to be you, being Deaf and all, and what you went through with-"_

Losing patience fast, Roxas finally let go of his phone and threw his hands down on top of Axel's, pinning them to the man's legs.

 _"Will you shut up? If you talk like that again I'll smack you, okay? Don't-"_ Wait, don't what? Did he just say something about boxes? Shit, Axel hated himself for blanking out now of all times. Roxas caught the confusion written all over his face and spelled it out—c-a-t-e-g-o-r-i-z-e. Damn that was hard to keep up with. _"—Don't categorize me, don't try and make me out to be something I'm not. I have trouble communicating. Fine. So would you, if I dropped you off in a foreign country."_

 _"I'd rather you wouldn't,"_ Axel responded. He was ignored.

_"You are still so freaking smug sometimes, you know that?"_

_"I—"_

_"I'm normal. I’m able. And no, my situation doesn't suck. It's as bad as YOU make it for me."_

_"…Roxas?"_

_"Just get to know me. You should know that by now."_

When Axel saw that Roxas was about to start again, he took his chance; he said a simple, "I'm sorry," out loud, because he needed his hands free for what he was about to do. He placed a gentle hand on the younger man's shoulder then slowly let it drop. It didn't seem to do anything. Axel wasn't quite sure why he did it in the first place.

 _"That wasn't directly at you,"_ Roxas said slowly, composed again. _"I guess I just... needed to get that out. But this is: okay, so you wanted to know more about me. Then WHY didn't you think to come to me first?"_

…Oh.

Well.

Apparently, Axel was an idiot. He sputtered for a moment that felt like an entire eternity, before Roxas, for the thousandth time in their brief relationship, did the last thing Axel would have expected.

He began to laugh.

It was a light, airy sound; uninhibited and pure, and it left Axel gaping helplessly at the display.  
 _  
"Roxas? …Roxas?"_

_"You really didn't think of it?"_

Growing embarrassed—and hating himself for it—Axel shrugged and averted his eyes. 

_"No. I didn't. I didn't think you would tell me."_ It took a warm, soft hand on his shoulder to get Axel to look up again, and he was met with a smiling Roxas whose laughter was only beginning to die down.

"Hey," Roxas said, out loud, quietly. There—that got Axel's attention. And the man's full, complete, and undivided attention was exactly what Roxas was looking for. _"Sorry?"_ he then offered. But for what Roxas had to be sorry for, Axel didn't know. So he shrugged, waved it off, and crossed his arms. _"I wouldn't have lied to you, Axel, if it makes you feel better. But I just…I don't want to talk about Xion with you. I just want to get on with my life."_

_"I get it."_

The room fell back into an uncomfortable silence.

After a moment of fidgeting, Roxas leaned over then froze for a moment, hesitant, waiting for something that he couldn't put his finger on. Then he went for it.

Axel wasn't exactly expecting the warm pair of lips that had just pressed against his cheek, but he welcomed it all the same. Slowly he let himself unclench and loosen the hell up as he spread out across the couch, unfolding his legs and hoisting them both up until he was laying on his back. Roxas shifted, too, crawling on top of him and so close to sitting on his lap, but leaving a few inches of empty space between them that Axel desperately wanted to fill. Roxas leaned forward and wrapped his arms loosely around Axel's neck, at the same time opening his mouth to allow Axel's tongue in.

It only lasted for a moment; after a short couple of seconds, Roxas pulled away to examine more of the older man, nipping at his ear, sucking at a place on his neck that Roxas noticed made Axel's breath catch. So Axel took a chance of his own, taking Roxas's hand as though it were made of finest porcelain and, carefully, beginning to guide it down his body. Stopping just short of his crotch he let go, giving Roxas the chance to take over and do as he might. 

To Axel's—surprise? delight? or maybe both-- Roxas continued down, sliding a hand between the redhead's legs and giving a short, small squeeze. Axel gasped and tightened his grip on Roxas, connecting their lips once again and raising a hand to stroke his hair. Beginning to lose his breath, Axel ran his hands over Roxas' sides, feeling under his shirt, over smooth stomach and back, before taking a hold of his hips, holding the boy steady for when Axel jerked his hips upward. Roxas gave a short sound—something not quite a moan but could have been--and retaliated.

With a small, barely detectable smile he shifted, making Axel's breath hitch, and again reached down. He glanced up at Axel again before unzipping Axel's fly. The only thought running through the man's head were the only words he'd be able to manage in this situation: fuck. Oh, oh fuck. It wasn't that Axel thought the blond sitting on top of him was being a tease on purpose, but this was just unfair. Roxas was good with his hands—incredibly good, careful, slow, deliberate—and it left Axel unsure how far to take this. Even though he sort of knew that if they went all the way it would be on Roxas's terms, that he was already a little whipped, he didn't want to pressure the boy. Axel was sick of that side of himself, sick of being that guy. But shit, he really, really wanted this. Wanted him. And everything about him.

Roxas stiffened up slightly as Axel sat up and pulled him close. Slowly, Roxas eased into the touch. Axel was about a second away from leaning forward, from whispering "let's take this to our room" in the boy's ear, but let out a groan instead. 

Right. He forgot.

So he leaned back once more, just enough, and signed it instead. Roxas hesitated for a moment, deep in thought, before nodding.

Axel gave Roxas a head start, allowing himself a moment to take a deep breath and wondering if it was worth it to zip up his jeans again. 

Nah.  
Taking one last, deep breath he pushed himself off of the couch and made his way through the hall, into the bedroom, finding that it was… slightly difficult walking around with a raging boner that was only half-free. And to walk in to the sight of Roxas, laying on their shared bed, took Axel all of his willpower to not simply tear off the boy's clothes and pounce.

But that wasn’t his style, so instead he took his sweet time.

Axel sauntered over to Roxas like there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happening. He flopped down on the edge of the bed, away from Roxas, and turned to face him. Axel’d made the first move enough times already--now it was the kid’s turn. Axel said nothing, simply motioned for the younger man to come near.

Roxas gave Axel a coy smile that, frankly, Axel wouldn't mind seeing from him more often.

Roxas’s eyes darted from Axel to something Axel couldn't see and back as he thought before he pushed himself over, nuzzling his head under Axel's chin. Axel couldn't remember the last time he held someone so close. Actually, he wasn't sure it had ever happened.

Slowly he pushed his hand up the back of Roxas's shirt, brushing light fingers up and down the man's spine. Roxas didn't move; in fact, it was like he wasn't quite paying attention, like something had been distracting him from the moment they had stepped foot into the bedroom.

Roxas pulled away.

_"What's up, Roxas?"_

_"You have work tomorrow at eight and I'm volunteering with Olette all morning. It's almost ten and we haven't even eaten yet. Should we really be doing this now?"_ Taken slightly aback, Axel shrugged and looked away before responding. 

_"Yeah. You're right."_ Roxas backed away and sat up, crosslegged, and smiled. The tenseness in Axel's stomach dissolved.

_"I'll start dinner?"_

Slowly Axel nodded. _"And I'm going to take a cold shower."_

 _"You have twenty minutes."_ And with another heart-meltingly warm smile, Roxas hopped off the bed and left the room.

Well.

Okay.

At least the timidness, the hesitance, the horrible feeling of loving a foreign stranger seemed to have lessened significantly.

Love, huh.

Axel pretended he never thought the word.

Stealing a glance down at his jeans, he slowly rose and padded down the hall and into the bathroom.

 

Dinner was good, as usual. Roxas had quickly stir fried some vegetables and chicken they'd had in the fridge and together they sat down on the couch to watch some TV as they ate. There was something really special about the situation that only now struck Axel for the first time. Something special in the feeling of belonging, the feeling of family. It was… sort of new to him, but not entirely unwelcome.

He polished off the last few bites of his meal and threw an arm around Roxas, who eased into the touch, setting his plate next to Axel's on the cherry wood coffee table and resting his head on Axel's shoulder. At some time nearing midnight the two boys finally resigned themselves and went to bed. They slept in an embrace, minds and bodies preparing themselves for the busy days that lay ahead.


	8. New Dawns and News Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Axel and Roxas decide to throw sex and realizations of love into the mix. Like everything else in their relationship, it's... something to get used to.

It finally happened the Friday after classes had resumed once again.   
  
The whole thing started when Roxas off-handedly mentioned that they’d never been on a real date. The comment was only half-serious, but as Axel had found himself with more pocket money due to the merciful combination of more hours and fewer bills to pay, he figured it was about time to do something in this relationship right. An actual date seemed like the right way to go about it.  
  
Sex wasn’t the first and foremost thing on their minds, but it was certainly up there. Neither of them said anything about it, but it was something they had both assumed was happening. An inevitability. Not to make that sound negative—quite the contrary, actually. Roxas was at peace with the idea and, throughout the morning of their big night, he found that the more he thought about it, the more okay he was with the whole thing. He was really starting to feel that Axel was different, that maybe he wasn’t the obnoxious-yet-irresistible meathead that Roxas had figured him for.  
  
Axel was much more than that, had played an important role in his post-Xion life.  
  
If nothing else, Axel was shaping up to be his best friend, his most wanted companion.  
  
Maybe it would work this time.  
  
Axel, on the other hand, found that he would’ve been ready at the word go. Still, the severity of just how much he was falling for this kid seemed to hit him during random parts of the day. He didn’t know what it was about Roxas that made him simultaneously want to laugh and scream, feel unconditional love and absolute exasperation. He supposed that was what happened when you invested actual emotions into a relationship.  
  
Love.  
  
Yeah, that was it.  
  
During a tired Wednesday dinner Axel brought the subject up again and they decided that Friday was as good a time as any to go out. Axel had a shift at work from noon to seven and Roxas needed to run some errands with Olette after his last class ended, so it actually worked out pretty well. Axel would take the car and they’d both end up in the same place at roughly the same time.  
  
When Friday came, Axel dressed in the nicest clothes he could find, snarky comments from his co-workers be damned. He was doing this tonight, and he was doing it right. Somehow his seven hour shift seemed unbearably long, every last customer grating on his nerves. Yeah, he was glad to be graduating soon. Then he could get a job that didn’t revolve around dealing with entitled idiots.   
  
Hopefully.  
He let his vague, half-formed ideas of a new job, a new life--with Roxas-- fill his mind and get him through his day. Suddenly it seemed to go a lot faster.  
  
Olette dropped Roxas off at the restaurant at seven. At 7:30 Axel arrived with Roxas’ car, straight from work, and together they were seated, ordered, and were left with little to do but wait for their food.  
  
“ _I didn’t take you for an English major,_ ” Roxas confessed finally. The thought had been lingering vaguely in the back of his mind ever since Olette told him, during their first behind-his-back conversation regarding Axel. Seriously, the girl knew everything. About everyone.  
  
The topic took Axel by surprise.   
  
_“Oh, uh. Well… yeah. It’s just what I chose because I had to pick SOMETHING, you know? And I like it just fine… I guess I sort of thought…”_  
  
 _“That it would be easy to BS?”_  
  
 _“Kinda. Hey, don’t give me that look!”_ With a grin Axel reached over and ruffled Roxas’s hair, making the boy laugh and playfully swat at his arm. Axel chucked along with him.  
  
 _“What are you going to do with it?”_  
  
 _“What, an English degree? No fucking clue, man.”_ The waiter brought them their food; they hardly noticed. _“The game store I work at hires from within… maybe I can find something to do in corporate.”_  
  
 _“…I can’t imagine you working in corporate.”_  
  
Axel grimaced, but Roxas only grinned. The redhead wasn’t quite sure he wanted to know what Roxas was thinking as he responded, _“Me neither.”_  
  
 _“Too bad there are no jobs for a major in napping!”_ Roxas replied, a little smirk still on his face.  
  
 _“…Shut up!”_ Axel reached over again, but Roxas was prepared this time pushed his hand out of the way before the man could further muss up his hair. It wouldn’t do any good to have sex hair before the sex even began. _“You’re a cruel one, Roxas.”_ Said cruel man snickered as he attempted to start his fettuccini.   
  
After swallowing his first bite he looked up and responded, _“And you’re shamelessly lazy.”_  
  
Axel grinned. _“Why thank you.”_  
  
 _“That’s not a compliment you know.”_  
  
In a mocking gesture Axel put his hand to his heart and let his face crumple into a pathetic frown. _“I am no longer speaking with you.”_ Roxas snorted and continued eating as Axel, snickering, took a sip of soda before chowing down. He hadn’t really realized it before, but he was absolutely starving. He was halfway through his own dinner before giving Roxas a gentle nudge. _”I’m taking a bite from your plate. Heads up.”_  
  
 _“Well, that didn’t last long,”_ Roxas deadpanned. It took Axel a moment to realize the blond was referring to his earlier comment.  
  
 _“Food always comes before silent treatment, got it memorized?”_ Smiling, Roxas shook his head and could only wonder what on earth he had gotten himself into. He was… actually having fun.  
  
It was weird being in the passenger’s seat of his own car but, like all things that came with Axel, this was something Roxas would have to get used to. The car, like the condo, was completely paid for, so so far all Axel really needed to do to call it his own—until he earned the means to buy himself one, anyway—was pay for his own gas. They decided during their dreadfully boring finance talk a few days before the man moved in that figuring out insurance could wait. So when Axel told Roxas over dinner that he’d taken the liberty of taking his—their---car into the shop and did a little work on it, that he’d figured out what was wrong and it was an easy enough fix... that had been weird too.   
  
Roxas, of course, was an only child. He wasn’t used to sharing like this with anyone. He didn’t mind it. Roxas was so caught up in his own mind that, when they arrived back at their place, Axel had to give him a tap on the shoulder to get moving.  
  
An exciting story would talk about how their lips met and tongues clashed, that they stumbled through the front door and barely made it to the bedroom, too consumed with ripping the others’ clothes off, caught up in the scent and taste and feel of the other. Of course, this is not an exciting story, and, like every other aspect of their relationship, the rest of the night seemed to sneak up on them when neither of the boys were really anticipating it.  
  
For one thing, Axel was tired. It was nine at night, not too late really, but working so many hours after such a long break was beginning to take its toll on the 21-year-old. All he really wanted to do was kick back on the couch and surf the internet on Roxas’s laptop if the boy was willing to give it up. It occurred to Axel that he could afford to save up for his own now—something he’d been wanting to do ever since his crashed halfway through his junior year. Almost had to rewrite his entire thesis paper for that pain in the ass history course he couldn’t get out of. The laptop had been a high school graduation present, and a one-time only deal. Neither he nor his parents had that kind of money to spend. But now… it was an odd sort of feeling, a good-odd feeling. He could save for a laptop, he’d get a new car fund going… and he enjoyed actually being able to pay for dinner.  
  
Axel had gotten lucky again.  
  
They settled down for bed at about eleven, Axel’s internet craving satisfied and Roxas fresh and still slightly damp from a shower he’d taken earlier in the night. Axel was laying on top of the bed, waiting for his turn in the bathroom as Roxas brushed his teeth, when he thought to ask Roxas if he felt like fooling around again. Mm. That sounded like a good plan.   
  
As Roxas emerged from the bathroom, it took one, tiny, insignificant, stupid thing, just one, to get Axel going: the blond gently rubbed the side of his neck, his eyes fluttering shut. He said something about how Axel could head in now, but he didn’t catch it, because that was when Axel’s body decided that Axel needed a boner _right now._   
  
“ _Roxas_ ,” he said; the sign name Axel had chosen he’d shamelessly stolen from Olette, who in turn had shamelessly stolen it from Hayner. The cross-fingered letter R held just slightly over the head, jutting out like one of the spikes in the man’s permanently messy hair.  
  
Roxas made a curious sound before his eyes landed on Axel’s lower region.  
  
Ah.  
  
Well, then.  
  
Looked like the night wasn’t quite over.   
  
They picked up where they left off only a few nights before. Roxas kept the bathroom light on but flicked the bedroom lights off, allowing just enough visibility for them to make out the shape of the other as to not render them both mute. As the blond made his way over to the bed, Axel pulled a condom out from the pocket of his black jeans and reached for his fly—but Roxas got there first, hoisting himself onto the bed and having unzipped and yanked down Axel’s jeans before the redhead could say, “got it memorized?”   
  
He dropped the condom next to them and pulled Roxas on his lap, wrapping his arms around the boy in a near death grip and kissing him. After slightly wiggling to free himself, Roxas returned the gesture, grabbing onto Axel’s shoulders and intensifying the kiss. It took several moments of some fruitless, awkward tongue-prodding to get Roxas to open his mouth, but when he did, well…The flood gates opened, and everything they’d been holding back since Axel had moved in was released.   
  
If someone were to walk in, hell, they probably would have thought the boys were trying to eat each other. It wasn’t pretty, but primal and desperate and, somehow, natural.  
  
Finally Roxas drew back, pressing soft kisses along the soft, pale skin of Axel’s neck. In response Axel grabbed the little blond’s ass and began grinding against him with a vigor he hadn’t felt since those backseat dry humping sessions with boys when he was fifteen. He was out of control, panting, and Roxas wasn’t far behind. He could feel Roxas getting harder and harder as their groins pressed together, Roxas clutching onto his shirt, nuzzling his head under Axel’s chin, allowing himself to let go, let his boyfriend take the lead, and become as limp as he could when he felt like he was about to go off before they even started.   
  
Luckily Axel seemed to be on his wavelength because he let go, allowing them both some room to strip. Axel fumbled for a moment before throwing off his shirt and then going for Roxas’s. They kissed again before Roxas sat up on his knees, still straddling Axel’s lap, to begin working at his own fly. He pulled off light, loose jeans, letting Axel pull off his shirt and tug down his boxers. Roxas gladly returned the favor.   
  
Now that they were fully naked—and once they had allowed themselves to ogle before going back for another kiss—Axel felt around next to him, trying to find where that condom had gone off to. They’d mussed up the covers more than Axel had realized, and it took him a moment to find the small package amidst all the folds in the fluffy bedspread. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Roxas reaching into a drawer right next to the bed as he ripped open the condom’s wrapping, pulling the rubber out and getting himself adjusted. He was sort of glad that Roxas hadn’t been looking. After all, Axel had never really figured out any sexy way to put on a condom.  
  
It became apparent what had distracted Roxas as soon as the blond produced a small bottle of massage oil. Axel took it from the man, applying a fair amount across three fingers. In a move even he admitted was a bit impressive, he leaned over, gently pushing Roxas from his sitting position onto his back, slid his legs out from under the man, and propped himself on top. The world’s smoothest position change, courtesy of Axel. He nipped at Roxas’s ear, pushed his legs apart, and took a deep breath.   
  
This was it.  
  
Slowly, he pressed one finger inside of Roxas, which made him squirm and moan. A good sign. He pushed it in deeper, just slightly, and curled it; Roxas’s hips gave a small buck and he gasped, clutching onto the bedspread. In went another finger and, when he thought Roxas could handle it, a third. Deep inside of the man, Axel’s fingers curled and spread, rubbing Roxas where he was most sensitive, where the feeling of pleasure was most acute, that one amazing place Axel had pinpointed, yes, right there…  
  
Axel watched Roxas, the way his chest rose and fell with each quick breath, how his eyes fluttered shut every time Axel pushed his fingers deeper, paired with the way his toes curled, hips bucked, hands clutched onto anything they could grab as if he would fall away. He took a deep breath, removed his fingers, and added a little extra oil to the condom for good measure. He hadn’t noticed that Roxas sat up again until the boy planted a kiss on his cheek and pressed his palms flat against the redhead’s chest, pushing Axel down against the pillows. He took over his old place atop of Axel’s lap and closed his eyes as Axel grabbed his hips and sent him down.   
  
Roxas’s eyes flew open, blue eyes meeting green. Axel managed a cocky little grin as he rolled his hips, pushing himself further inside the blond. Roxas’s breathing quickened, his pulse raced, and, unable to contain himself, he cried out. The sound was an encouragement to Axel who then sped up, pushing up and up and bringing Roxas’s hips back down, meeting in time with each of his small, quick thrusts. Again Roxas pressed his hand’s against Axel’s bare chest, feeling the man up and down, running his thumbs over hard nipples down to all those dark red hairs that hinted natural hair color and teased Roxas with the prospect of where they stopped whenever the man walked around without a shirt on. He let out another moan and sent himself down, hard.  
  
Roxas’s eagerness wasn’t really something Axel knew how to play off of all that well. He wasn’t sure what it said about him that he was a little unused to his partners being free of any sense of hesitance, nervousness, or intoxication, but there you had it. Roxas took Axel’s hands, lifting them from their place and gently kissing them both before he picked up his pace, almost thrashing, almost desperate. His muscles tightened, breathing became quick and shallow and erratic—and Axel tried to keep up, faster, harder, deeper, deeper into the moment, for the first time in….who knows how long, if ever…he completely lost himself in the moment, lost himself to Roxas.  
  
The whole ‘light bursting behind your eyes’ thing that sex scenes really love going on and on about? Truth. By the time Axel really came to himself again, he saw that Roxas had finished too. Sluggishly, they pulled apart from one another; Roxas grabbed a handful of tissues so they could clean up. He looked more than a little drowsy, but happier than Axel had ever seen him.   
  
It suddenly occurred to Axel that he hadn’t even bothered to ask Roxas if he was a virgin, or at least, if he’d ever been with another guy; but, in the end, as they cuddled up together, exchanging their good nights and content with their evening, that it really didn’t matter.  
  
Really, it’d been a Friday like no other.  
  
They were greeted all too soon by a Monday they never thought would come. It seemed like an entire lifetime had passed since Spring Break had began, and they both sort of felt like different people. Well, maybe not different, really—just more. More whole. Somehow this relationship had caused them to fix things about themselves they wouldn’t have previously admitted needing fixing.  
  
He woke up at 9AM to the sun shining in his face from a gap between Roxas’s light-blocking curtains. They’d forgotten to close it all the way before bed. He immediately rose to conduct his search for Roxas, who typically got up at eight if for no other reason than to get to the bathroom before Axel—who, in Roxas’s words, took “twelve years” to get ready. He found Roxas in the kitchen, making breakfast, and greeted the boy at the stove by wrapping long, slender arms around his waist and planting a kiss on his cheek. Laughing, Roxas would squirm out of Axel’s grip and continue making their eggs, hash browns, and bacon.   
  
Once Axel let go to get something to drink from the fridge Roxas would take off his headphones and unplug them from the stereo he got from Naminé when she got a new one. The sound of some classic rock song Axel vaguely knew from when his first college roommate would play blared from the speakers, the words somewhat muffled by the pounding of the bass. Lucky for them that all of Roxas’s neighbors were either deaf, already out for school or work, or both. And Axel, personally, liked the blaring music first thing in the morning. He found it bracing.  
  
Slowly they’d pull themselves together, eating, dressing, and washing up, before heading out at 10:30. Roxas’s first class didn’t begin until one, so he had plenty of time to eat again, study, and hang around with Olette and her crowd while Axel was already slogging through his second class of the day.   
  
All in all, his new average day was looking to be pretty damn good.


	9. Connecting (and Reconnecting)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Axel runs into a friendly face.

The first few weeks back at school finished out just fine. Nothing too remarkable happened, but then, Axel wasn't really expecting it to. Looking back on the events of the last month, he wasn't sure what exactly would even qualify as _remarkable_ anymore. Honestly, he was getting the feeling that Roxas's presence in his life pretty much filled the _remarkable_ quota for an entire lifetime.

Getting back into the swing of things took some getting used to; turns out, ten days off was just enough to make him completely forget where he'd left off in his math class and have to do unpleasant amounts of cramming for an upcoming psych test. Still, it wasn't something he was really sweating over. Never was. All he ever had to do was stumble along and things always (somehow) turned out for the best. And really, that was the way he liked it.

On a cool, sunny morning, Axel got out of his psychology course almost an hour early. His test had been easier than he'd anticipated so he breezed right through it. Was the first one out the door, even. So, he shifted his energies to the next most worthwhile thing in his life—tracking down Roxas. He wandered over to the mostly unfamiliar communications area, passing through small groups of people—freshman, mostly, by the look of it—keeping his eyes open for a petite blond boy in baggy clothes.

He finally found the kid sitting on a patch of grass between the main communication building and the library. Roxas was deep in conversation with Olette, talking homework and tests and spring break. Neither of them really paid too much attention to the source of the shadow that suddenly cast itself over them, until Olette finally seemed to realize that, yeah, there was actually a person there that had no intention of moving. She looked up and smiled, waving. Roxas, in a classic Roxas move, didn't even look up.

Axel got the impression that the kid was sort of used to getting ignored and stopped even trying to acknowledge her friends.

The peppy brunette reached over to tap Roxas's shoulder, finally making the man look up. He and Axel shared a small, secret look, before Axel took a seat himself. Without really thinking he pulled Roxas over, and it gave him pause when he realized exactly what he'd just done. It was almost instinctive on his part, and it took Roxas a second to decide whether or not to accept the advance. In the end he did, resting his head lightly on Axel's chest and lacing their fingers together.

Olette then rose to her feet and brushed herself off.

" _Well, I guess I should get going_. _"_ Before she turned completely around to head off she smiled, a look that Axel couldn't help think was slightly smug in an _I-told-you-so_ kind of way. Roxas slid his hand not holding Axel's free and held it up in a _stop_ gesture, but the girl simply waved before turning and leaving.

With a sigh Roxas shrugged into Axel's embrace and the two of them sat, enjoying the sun and the breeze and each other's company. Axel considered apologizing for making Olette leave, but thought better of it. It was too comfortable where he was to have to move. Actually, if he closed his eyes he could probably get to sleep. Roxas must've had the same thought process, because he abruptly pulled himself away and stood, stretching.

" _I have to go to the office really quick, you coming with?_ " Roxas signed rapidly. It was starting to occur to Axel that the boy didn't need to dumb himself down too much anymore, something he was sure came as a relief to them both.

" _Yeah, sure_." It took Axel a little longer to rise from his place on the field—old age, he thought, semi-ironically—and together they strode to the welcome office, Axel speeding up marginally to push the door open for Roxas, and prepared to wait in line. Roxas was midway through a sentence about grabbing lunch from the cafeteria when they were done, when again Axel spotted a head of blue hair.

Roxas immediately stopped as he saw Axel straighten and tense up like someone had just done something very rude to him.

" _Axel?_ " The question was ignored.

Axel was watching the man at the front of the line, waiting. Waiting for him to turn around so Axel could get a glimpse of his face. This wasn't possible, this couldn't be happening, not here, not now. Not with Roxas right next to him.

Fuck.

Of course his suspicions were confirmed when Saix turned to leave. There was no other alternative. No one else had that color hair, no one else could possibly give off such an incredible air of smugness while doing nothing but standing at a desk and waiting for a secretary. And for gods' sake, no one wore that much black, _no one._

It still came as a bit of surprise to see the man's features after four years—the striking eyes brimming with an adult sort of impatience, the cuts that Axel had given him the last time they saw each other now an angry, permanent X across his face.

Saix seemed to do a small double take too, when he glanced to his right by chance, to see Axel staring at him. He quickly regained his composure, but Axel couldn't say the same. Axel was still wondering what the hell was going on and how he could stop it.

A small almost-smile crossed Saix's face. Axel didn't like it one bit.

"I'm surprised to see you here," he said finally, the look still on his face.

"Likewise," Axel muttered. He wanted to look away but found that he couldn't; using sign to communicate had conditioned him to watch for body language and facial expressions. It was habit by now.

"I'm surprised to see you're still in school at all." If he hadn't put up with the man's sarcasm throughout most of his teen years, Axel would have been offended.

"Ha, ha. So what are you doing here, Isa?"

Saix narrowed his eyes but didn't say anything regarding Axel's slip up. They both knew that name, that identity, was long gone.

"It happens that this University has the ideal graduate program for my major."

Lovely. Just fucking perfect. So there was a good chance of Axel bumping into Saix around town. Saix had better not go anywhere near the convenience store just off campus. That was off limits.

Suddenly Axel noticed that Saix's focus had shifted, and he became aware of Roxas's presence again. All too aware. He felt as though just having Saix in the general vicinity would cause Roxas to find out all of his horrible secrets through osmosis or something. For a moment all Saix did was look back and forth between the two of them, down to Roxas, up to Axel and back. He smiled. It was a nasty, cruel look on him.

Even Roxas now had a deadly serious look on his face; Saix's presence alone put Roxas on edge—the man had that effect on people.

Without any of the once-familiar humor or irony, Saix looked Axel in the eye and said, "Four." He let Axel absorb the personal significance of the number and watched his eyes blaze in anger before leaving his former friend one last thought.

"I find it disheartening that you're settling. Or are you playing babysitter now?"

Roxas left before Axel could even form a coherent thought, and the urge to slug this man was almost irresistible. Because they were surrounded by people—some of whom were staring, others were just wondering who the hell was holding up the line—Axel couldn't do anything. He hated that he couldn't do anything. All he could do was watch in a horrified awe as Saix left the office, head held high, and, when he regained himself enough (and was finally told that the line was moving by an irate Junior), rush out to find Roxas.

"Roxas!" Axel shouted furiously, bursting out the door. It took two more times and several more odd looks before Axel realized his own idiocy. _Fuck_. He threw his arms down hard in frustration and stomped off in a random direction in hopes of finding him. He was halfway across campus when he remembered his cell phone's existence. Rapidly he pulled it from his pocket: no messages. Then he noticed the time. _Fuck!_

He had to hightail it to the science building if he wanted to get to his lab on time.

_How the hell did this happen_?

Leave it to Saix to ruin everything for everyone. 

Or something.

 

After his lab, Axel found Roxas in the library. The blond was working on his laptop, checking back and forth between his textbook and the screen, oblivious to the redhead's presence.

Axel took a deep breath and, bracing himself, slowly reached to tap Roxas's shoulder. Roxas jumped, predictably, and Axel rared himself to apologize—but Roxas met him with a smile and wave that rendered it unnecessary. So Axel decided to go back to the beginning.

" _I'm so sorry,_ " he said. " _I can't believe…"_ but he still didn't quite know what to say. " _I just… I can't._ " Roxas shrugged, resting his hands on his knees and leaning back. He looked a little solemn.

" _Who was that guy?"_

" _Someone from my past."_ Axel cringed. That sounded less dorky in his head.

" _It's okay, you know. I could really give a shit. I don't even know what he said."_

_"No. It's not okay."_ The sudden passion in Axel's words made Roxas stop and suspect that there was something going on that he wasn't quite in on.

" _Right. It's not okay. What can you do."_

Roxas's nonchalance was a lie; that much was clear. This was something familiar to him, Axel was sure of it, and his blond boyfriend was doing his best to make it seem like nothing—that he got treated like he was nothing. Axel wondered for a moment if the reason Roxas was so hostile to his advances at the beginning was, in part, because it was so unusual to him and he didn't know how to handle the attention from an outsider.

Or Axel was full of shit and needed to get his head out of Psych 101. Either way was possible.

"… _So, what did 'four' mean?"_ Axel's lack of response said it all. "… _Ah_."

" _I guess I have some stuff to tell you."_

_"Yeah, I guess you do."_ With that, Roxas began to pack up and slide his things in his bag. He leaned over to give Axel a quick kiss on the lips and added, " _I need to run to the car real quick. See you later."_

Axel slumped over, resting his head on the now Roxas-less desk, and closed his eyes. _Right_.

 

Axel had been thirteen when he met Saix, and his name then was Lea. He couldn't come up with how they met, only that they had become fast friends. In a way, Saix, then Isa, was everything that Axel wanted to be. Axel's family was at best working class, strict but loving; Saix's mother ran a successful international business and his father was the chief of police so, between his abundance of money and power, he could get away with anything. And they got away with a lot of shit in their day.

Axel also couldn't come up with the particular time when he noticed that Saix's gentle sarcasm turned from a funny display of his sense of humor to genuinely hurtful, or when their ideas of pranks went from putting out fake vomit in the hall to filling school misfits' lockers with topsoil. But he was at least self aware enough in his twenties to realize that, since he was never the butt of the joke, he didn't see how damaging the way they treated other people had been.

He could remember his reputation getting better and better the more he hung around Saix, and how boys who wouldn't give him the time of day before suddenly wanted to get in his pants and girls who once rolled their eyes and him now laughed at all his jokes. Suddenly everyone wanted to be his best friend. He lost his virginity relatively young and spent the majority of his sixteenth and seventeenth years bed-hopping. Picking the best of the best and openly rejecting those he didn't see as up to his high, high standards. He could also remember when they made a game of very publicly rating his classmates on their looks as they passed by them in the hall. One through ten. And they made sure the tens were few and far between. And nines and eights and sevens, for that matter.

It was sometime after Saix and Axel had gotten tattoos, after they'd legally changed their names to the nicknames they had given each other, that Axel realized that he'd turned into some kind of monster. He saw Saix pick and pick at someone one day, until the girl finally broke down and cried. That struck Axel as particularly wrong; Saix disagreed.

The night after graduation, they got into a nasty fight. Axel wanted Saix to admit that at least some of what they had been doing was wrong, and Saix insisted that Axel was being blinded by unnecessary guilt; that the world was his if he grabbed it. That everything was theirs. Axel said that he didn't know Saix anymore, that Saix was a pale imitation of who he used to be. A shell of someone good.

So Saix punched him. And Axel struck back.

Saix ended up with two nasty gashes running down his face that, in all the confusion, Axel couldn't remember even doing to him. And Axel hadn't exactly gotten away scot free himself; he was bleeding, bruised, and he had been almost sure his nose was broken. It hadn't been, fortunately, but the marks he left on Saix would never go away. To be honest, when reflecting on the whole ordeal, Axel couldn't help but wonder why Saix didn't go ahead and press charges. He had more money than Axel could even wish for and hell, his dad could probably have had him arrested.

But he didn't.

And then, all these years later, he greeted Axel like an old friend… in his own way, of course.

It didn't sit right with him. It didn't sit right at all.

When Axel related the story to Roxas the next day, in the library, Roxas's reaction was mild.

" _Lea is a girl's name. You have a girl's name."_

"… _What?"_

" _Your name is stupid."_ Then he cracked a grin and Axel had to stifle his laughter.

" _You should've seen my hair, man."_

Roxas clapped a hand over his mouth and snickered, flushing slightly.

" _Shut up."_

"… _Hey,"_ Axel said with a little hesitance. This idea popped into his head a second ago, and he was thinking that it really was about time for him to really let him know… " _I love you."_ Roxas stopped for only a moment; he didn't seem surprised and just smiled and nodded. He returned the sign and then took the redhead's hand, molding his pointer finger and thumb into a small circle.

Axel had absolutely no idea what was going on.

He awkwardly kept his hand the way Roxas had put it as Roxas did the same, the circle of his fingers looped between his. Roxas kept it going just long enough to give Axel a significant look; a look that Axel knew meant something serious, but he didn't know _why_ it meant something serious _._ He was slightly relieved when Roxas broke eye contact and the sign to give him a quick hug. Then he slid his chair back and stood, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

" _It's almost five and I'm starved. You mind an early dinner?"_

" _Nah. Let's go. I don't like being in libraries any longer than I have to."_

" _Take out good?"_ Roxas asked as they filed out, heading toward the glass double doors. A passing professor pushed the door just hard enough as he entered to give the boys time to walk out, allowing Axel to avoid an unnecessary pause to reach for the door himself.

" _Yeah, sounds great. I'll pay."_

They walked in comfortable silence to the parking lot when Roxas suddenly turned and said, " _Hey, Axel._ "

"What?"

" _For the record, I'm not a four. I'm a ten—"_ and, with a cocky little grin he added, " _Got it memorized?"_

Yeah. Axel was in love.

 

Dinner was a really nice break from all the work that they had been hit with, but once they stepped into the front door, they had to snap back into study mode. Axel knew he would regret wasting his hour break in between his last classes by hanging with some classmates instead of doing homework, but he'd thought it'd been worth it at the time. Luckily for him, though, he really only had an essay to finish up, and once he just got himself to sit down and _do it_ , it was finished in no time. Funny how those things work.

They settled in around eight, done with everything that needed doing and ready to kick back. Roxas had no classes on Thursday and Axel only had to stick around for two hours in the morning, so it always felt like the weekend came extra early. Axel just had to remember that he was closing at the gaming store. Then Friday, the weekend, work again Sunday… he sighed, running his fingers through his hair. It felt sort of good being busy for once.

But it felt just as good doing nothing, too.

Roxas and Axel, at around nine, had gotten far too bored with TV and there was no way in hell Axel was going to pick up a book after doing all that homework, so they decided to go ahead and get the bath started, grab some towels, and strip down. Axel jumped in as soon as the bath was filled, sinking into the hot, hot water, the steam against his face, leaning back to soak his hair completely. He hadn't realized just how sore he'd been the past few days until he submerged himself and felt everything that had been tense since he'd run into Saix loosen up.

" _Roxas, you coming in?"_ He looked over at the boy, sitting cross-legged on the toilet seat, his towel draped in his lap.

" _When it cools."_

_"Why wait?"_ Axel said. _"Get in here right now."_

" _When it cools!"_

Axel shook his head, intentionally a little hard, splashing Roxas with droplets of water, which Roxas batted away. " _You're a tease, Roxas."_

" _Am not."_

" _You are. You're a tease and a cruel, cruel man."_

Then Axel got an idea.

He was sure the mischievous grin on his face was anything but reassuring to Roxas, who suddenly looked a tad wary. Then Axel leaned out of the tub, dripping water all over the floor, grabbed Roxas's towel, and _pulled_. " _Axel, what are you—"_ but of course, by the time Roxas reacted it was too late.

" _Asshole!"_   he signed, holding in laughter and reaching out to smack Axel's arm.

Axel slid back down into the tub again, laughing as he threw the towel back at Roxas. Roxas rolled his eyes as he finally gave up and slid into the tub, resting his back against Axel's chest. They both sighed contentedly, and Roxas said, " _This was a good idea,_ " but Axel had closed his eyes. That was fine. Roxas was just talking, and didn't really care if he was listened to.

Slowly, Axel snaked his arm around Roxas's waist and tilted his head forward enough to press his cheek to the top of Roxas's head, enjoying the feel of his skin, the smell of his soft hair. He let his hand drop down and wander, brushing Roxas's inner thighs, then up to his stomach, across his chest to tweak a nipple, before letting his arms settle in an embrace around the blond's shoulders. Roxas smiled, resting his hands over Axel's and closing his eyes.

Yeah. This was a good idea.

They stayed like that, resting, letting themselves breathe and just _be_ , for some time that seemed, at once, to take an eternity and be over far too soon. The water was getting lukewarm.

Roxas pulled away, using Axel's chest as leverage so he could turn himself around and take a seat at the other side of the tub. _"I've been thinking about what you said a few nights back. About how you don't know what you want to do after you graduate."_

" _Oh yeah?"_ Axel responded with his token indifference.

" _Why don't you become a mechanic? I saw the way you worked on your car and how quickly you fixed mine. You really love it. And you can go to school for that stuff."_

Axel wasn't really sure how to respond. Honestly, he never expected Roxas to put this kind of thought into it.

" _I'd like to, trust me. But I've got nearly four years of college under my belt and in four weeks I'll have a BA in English. I still have so many bills to pay off, even with all the financial aid and scholarships. I don't know how I could do two more years of school, man. And in case you haven't noticed, it's a little late to start applying. "_

" _So? Take a year off and start saving. You know if you teach for a year some colleges will count that as a way to pay off your debt?"_

"… _You think I should teach."_ Roxas continued to look serious for a few minutes before the same thought seemed to pass between them- _Axel teaching. Yeah, right—_ and cracked up.

" _It was just an idea,"_ Roxas said, still chuckling. He waited until the last of their laughter died away before adding. " _Just… you know. Think about it."_

" _I will."_ Then Axel felt the uncontrollable urge to say _it_ again: " _I love you."_

" _I love you too. And I hope you noticed…"_

" _Noticed what?"_ Axel asked. Roxas grinned and put an innocent look on his face.

" _Well I dunno, maybe if you don't know I shouldn't tell you."_

To that, Axel responded by pushing out his arm to get enough of a wave to splash Roxas in the face. The blond winced and lifted his arms to shield himself, sputtering a little. Axel looked away to hide his snickering.

" _Try me,_ " he said as Roxas spit out the water.

" _Your name,"_ Roxas said finally.

" _My… name? What about it?"_

" _Axel. "A" over the heart. I changed it. From here-"_ he placed his closed hand in the center of his chest, " _to here._ " Then shifted it slightly to his left. "A" over the heart.

"… _Oh_." Axel was…actually oddly touched by this. He wasn't sure what to say, so he didn't respond. Roxas seemed to understand.

For some reason, all Axel could think at that moment was that, after so many years of fearing it, for once he was just glad he could feel this way.

 

Monday, of course, came all too quickly. At the same time, the reality of graduation was quickly approaching. His parents had already booked a hotel room so they could be there for the ceremony (and meet Roxas, of course), and he was putting the final touches on all of his last projects. It was a little hard to believe that this was it, he was a real adult, and he was never going to school again.

Well, maybe. He'd be lying if he said Roxas's suggestion hadn't been knocking around his brain all weekend.

He contemplated it further as he, for the first time in quite a while, dropped by the convenience store just off campus to grab some bagels. He was a little worried he had developed some sort of dependency on bagels while he was living with Zexion, because after just a few bagel-less weeks, he was starting to get those late night cravings that were nigh impossible to satisfy.

He took his usual turn down the soft drink aisle, and was sort-of-not-really surprised to see Olette rooting through the energy drinks.

"Any luck?" he asked. Olette flung herself away from the refrigerator and dropped her soda—she dipped down and recovered, catching it seconds before it hit the ground.

" _That_ was lucky," she said cheerfully. "And to answer your question, yes. Jolt's been getting me through all my exams."

"I lived off that stuff in high school." Axel replied. There was a bit of awkward silence before he continued. "Actually, I'm really glad I ran into you. I have to ask you about a sign Roxas showed me."

Olette's interest had been clearly piqued. "Oh yeah?"

"It was sort of like… hold on." He replicated what Roxas had done as best as he could; two linked "A-okay" signs. Olette put a hand to her mouth as she gasped, then put her other hand over her heart. She only spoke once she was able to compose herself.

"That's huge, Axel. What Roxas was saying was that he feels linked to you. It's something that goes beyond like, being best friends or a couple… he feels connected to you on a really deep level. That's what that means."

"…Oh." Again Roxas had, although indirectly this time, left him speechless.

Olette began shifting her weight between one leg, then the other. It seemed to Axel to be a nervous habit, which in turn made him nervous, too. She was trying to hold back but couldn't, finally blurting out, "Well, what do you think?"

"Oh, er… I don't know. I'm okay with it?" Suddenly Axel was taken back to September, when he and Olette had spoken about his relationship with Roxas for the first time, when Axel had said something like, _well, It's not like I'm going to marry him or anything._ For one odd, disorienting second, he had a complete moment of clarity in regards to just how far they'd come over the course of a school year. Then it was gone. "And you know what? I think I feel the same way. Got it memorized?" He sent her a wave after he turned to walk to the register, his bagels already in hand, eager to get home to his boyfriend.

When he got home, Axel was going to make sure Roxas knew exactly that.

Or he was going to bang him. That worked too.


	10. Anticipation and Incarceration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amidst post-graduation celebrations, a meeting with an old friend goes downhill.

If you had asked Roxas a year ago his opinion on the whole "watching people as they sleep" thing, he would have said it was undoubtedly creepy.

But here he was.

It was ten in the morning and, for the next few hours, they had nowhere to be. Roxas stretched, a little sore but pleasantly so, and pulled the fluffy comforter up to his neck. The air conditioning had kicked on a bit earlier in the morning and it was just starting to get chilly. He rubbed his arms to combat it as Axel grumbled something in his sleep and turned to face the wall. Initially Roxas had planned to wake him but… for some reason he couldn't bring himself to do it. He told himself that it was because the longer Axel spent sleeping, the less he'd spend talking. It made a small smile spread across his face and he laid down again, curling into the covers and pressing his face against Axel's bare back. There he pressed a small kiss, which made Axel murmur something else and clutch the sheets.

It wasn't so bad, really. Axel had, surprisingly, turned out to be a pretty decent guy. And Roxas sort of appreciated that the man had a few years on him, because he found that Axel wasn't a bad person to turn to for advice. Whenever he was facing some sort of problem that he supposed in hindsight was a teenager thing, a freshman thing, Axel had been there, done that. Knew what to do and not to do. In return, Roxas coached him in sign language. Somewhere along the lines, they'd become equals and In between their romantic moments he found that there was something else there, too; a genuine friendship, maybe. Teamwork. Camaraderie. They'd settled into a domestic sort of comfort, which was odd to him, but he figured it must have been a good thing. Roxas was beginning to find that every day he was smiling more and lately he tended to be much, much quicker to laugh.

Roxas rolled onto his back and pushed his arm under the pillow. He breathed in deep, catching the last of the sex smell that still lingered in the air. Next to him, Axel was finally beginning to stir. Axel groaned and rubbed his eyes, looking around a little before noticing that Roxas was awake. He shifted to rest his head on the blond's stomach, which made Roxas jump slightly before settling again. He reached down to gently stroke Axel's bright red hair and yawned.

" _Big day,"_   he signed after Axel shifted to look him in the eye.

"Yup," Axel agreed.

" _You nervous?"_

"Me? Nah." Axel stretched and reached up, running a hand over Roxas's hair. " _All I have to do is pick up some silly diploma. Dinner's what I'm stressing over, frankly."_ He grinned.

" _Yeah…"_   Roxas said, a little distantly. Axel's grin faded.

" _Hey, I'm kidding. My parents will like you just fine. And I have no problem translating."_

" _Glad I won't burden you."_ The humor in his words didn't shine through.

" _Hey. That's not what I was saying. I'd be able to translate for you properly—better?"_

" _Sorry."_

" _S'fine."_ Axel leaned up, kissed Roxas, and set his head right back down on the blond's chest. He then smiled, stroked Roxas's face once. " _Just chill out, all right?"_

" _I'll try,"_ Roxas deadpanned, and laughed along with Axel.

Sometime after they fell into silence Roxas began to suggest that they get up and dressed, but Axel missed it, having already moved to push himself onto his stomach and prop himself up by the elbows. Then, he threw the sheet back over the bed, covering himself and the lower half of Roxas's body; Roxas cried out, not expecting Axel to suddenly be down _there_! Over the sheets, Roxas clutched onto Axel's hair. This was _not_ fair—in fact, this was downright dirty.

Roxas groaned loudly, only partially in annoyance. Axel snickered, pressing kisses up the boy's stomach and down his bare legs. Roxas considered letting Axel know that he would kill him if he left any hickeys in hard-to-explain places, until he figured that telling Axel no would just increase the man's desire to do it, so he kept his hands to himself. Still. It really wasn't so bad. Especially now that Axel's lips had found a slightly better spot, one that made his toes curl and a contented sigh to escape his own lips. When Axel stopped, Roxas found that he was still feeling a little floaty, a bit…ethereal.

Axel resurfaced a moment later.

"Not hard to get you worked up, huh?"

" _Shut up."_

" _I liked the sounds you were making last night."_ Roxas rolled his eyes and they fell into silence. " _…Hey,"_ he said suddenly, with surprising sincerity. " _I like your voice. I know that doesn't mean much… but there you go."_ A beat. "Okay," Axel said with an odd finality to his voice. " _Time to get up, Rox."_ Roxas tensed a little as Axel rose, having not really expected him to move. For a moment he simply sat and watched his boyfriend pace around the room once before walking over to the drawers. Axel finally pulled on a pair of boxers and stretched, Roxas watching intently; the way the muscles across his back and arms moved, underneath smooth, white skin… the redhead turned to Roxas as an impish grin stretched across the man's face. " _Shower?"_

Roxas smiled and rolled his eyes.

" _Yeah. But only if we're just going to wash."_

"Psh. _You're no fun."_

" _That's me._ "

At that Axel threw back his head and laughed, grabbing a pair of sweats for himself and tossing some clothes over to Roxas as well. _"_

_I hope that's not what you're planning to wear to the ceremony."_

" _Well, I would if I could get away with it…"_ Axel admitted, blinking the last of the tiredness from his eyes. He took a step forward then, upon seeing that Roxas still had yet to move from his place underneath the bed's rumpled sheets, grabbed the boy's legs and _pulled._ Roxas just counted himself lucky for having such good reflexes, or else his face probably would have met the floor, as Axel obviously hadn't intended to support his weight once he actually got out of the bed.

Jerk.

Shooting the laughing redhead a dirty look, Roxas grabbed the clothes that had been thrown at him earlier and together they made their way into the bathroom.

By the time noon rolled around the boys had washed up, dressed, and even got the opportunity to straighten up a little in the kitchen and living room. They made sandwiches for lunch and discussed arrival times, dinner plans, and Axel's folks as they ate. Being able to talk with your mouth full was one of the definite pluses of dating a deaf boy. Axel and Roxas were _getting shit done_.

"A little nervous, kid?" Axel asked, watching the way Roxas continually glanced back at the clock as they polished off their sandwiches.

" _I don't want to be late_ ," Roxas responded.

" _Yeah. Won't happen. Nothing else on your mind? Nothing at all?"_ They held a brief, impromptu staring contest before Roxas relented.

" _I've never exactly been brought to meet anyone's parents before, you know,"_ he admitted. " _Especially not from a hearing family. So yeah, I'm a little nervous."_

Axel couldn't help it. The corners of his mouth began to twitch and he started to laugh. Sure, he joked about not being too sure about how this whole thing was going to work, but to see that Roxas was actually sweating over it? Priceless.

"S _hut up!_ "

Unfortunately, it was too late. Axel lost control. He curled up in his place on the couch, hugging his sides and laughing until his vocal cords decided to stop letting out sound.

"I'm sorry," Axel said, squeaking a little, then rapidly signed it, too. He calmed himself slowly, as best as he could, panting a little as he sat back up. He clutched his stomach, letting out a hearty, "Whew!" Maybe Axel'd been more nervous than he thought, because that felt _great_ , even if though the muscles in his stomach were now sore as hell .

Axel wiped his eyes with the corner of his tank top as Roxas huffed and pouted at the other end of the couch. With surprising self-awareness, Axel let out a sheepish grin. "… _Sorry. It's just… don't worry. My parents are the least intimidating people on the face of this planet. They're both a head shorter than me and, trust me, they'll be a lot more afraid of you than you are of them."_ He chuckled and grinned again.

Roxas kicked Axel from the other end of the couch.

At one they loaded into the car, Roxas noticeably subdued and Axel now feeling slightly jittery. Whether it was due to excitement or nerves, he couldn't tell. All he knew was that he felt like he'd been waiting for this his whole life. He was so fucking done with school. He was so fucking ready to just get on with his life. As he pulled out of the driveway and hit the road, Axel shot a grin to Roxas.

They were on their way.

The ceremony itself was mostly sitting. That didn't surprise Axel. As he and his few hundred classmates (split up by last name; he actually had some 6,000 classmates but hell if anyone could sit through _that)_ sat before various department heads giving semi-heartfelt, semi-inspirational speeches about how they were apparently about to go out and change the world. It was a little less syrupy than his high school graduation, which he appreciated, but really, once you've been through one graduation ceremony, you've been through them all. He searched for Roxas in the crowd, seated with Olette, who was there to see Axel, of course, but also some other friends because she knew everybody in the world who ever existed. He barely made out his parents' faces, as they were seated on Roxas's other side. Axel hadn't had a lot of time to sneak out and visit once he was in the building, but he had at least made sure that they all knew who was who.

Axel glanced around some more, examining the faces of his classmates. He wasn't entirely sure what he was feeling. He was thrilled, of course-he was finally, actually graduating, he'd worked his ass off for his stupid degree and it felt fucking awesome. But there was something else there, too. Something melancholy and confused. Still. It frustrated him more than he could say.

He looked around at all the faces he'd seen for the last year, some longer, and it only now hit him that he recognized about half of them; he could name even fewer than that. And it was a huge class, he couldn't be expected to know everyone, but…

He sort of wondered, at the worst possible time, if he missed out. If he should have gone out and partied and been social, gone out with a bang and for the last time get the smug satisfaction of being the big man on campus. He wondered if he'd look back in ten years, when buddies reminisced about frat parties and meaningless sex, all-nighters and 2AM food runs, if he'd feel as though he missed out. He'd lived off-campus and only really found himself a handful of tolerable acquaintances. That's not what he thought his college experience should be. He wondered if he should feel disappointed that his college years were nothing like what he saw in the movies.

He did club, he supposed. So at least there was that, but that was pretty independent from his school. And he hadn't been since… God, he wasn't sure when he last went. Since he met Roxas, probably.

He searched the crowd for the boy.

His eyes met with Roxas's suddenly, as though the rest of the crowd had disappeared. They had just been drawn there like some magnetic force had been at work. The blond smiled and waved; Axel grinned.

Nah.

He hadn't miaaws a thing.

Dinner went even better than Axel could have hoped for. He was still in the afterglow of getting to finally stand and throw off his stupid hat and the glorious idea that he'd never have to go back to school again--unless, of course, he decided to admit to himself that maybe Roxas was onto something about becoming a mechanic. But that was a slightly painful prospect to consider at that point in time. As he picked up his diploma he only let himself relish his victory and vaguely fantasize about his future.

After all of the hubbub of the ceremony's end and finding Roxas and the car and trying to fight his way through traffic, he had to admit that it was nice seeing his parents again. His Sunday phone calls had lessened slightly as his workload picked up, and honestly after he moved in with Roxas… well, other things had been occupying his time. But it was good being with family again.

His parents were hesitant to talk to Roxas. He'd expected that. They were irritated that Axel hadn't told them that he had moved as soon as he should have. He expected that too.

It was almost seven at night and the restaurant was packed; Axel thought that taking everyone to a less upscale place twenty minutes away would guarantee less graduation traffic, but he thought totally and completely wrong. Almost a half-hour of congratulations and endless questions from his parents passed after they were seated before a waiter even so much as acknowledged them, Roxas remaining still and silent the entire time. Which was probably for the best at this point; Roxas had a tendency of getting irritable when hungry, and a cranky boyfriend wasn't something Axel felt like dealing with at the moment. He grabbed some soda crackers from the center of the table and pushed them toward the blond, just to be on the safe side.

" _Hey,_ " Axel asked carefully as his parents discussed the menu. " _Roxas, do you want me to order for you or do you want to take care of it yourself?"_ Roxas shrugged, yawning.

" _I don't care. Whatever's easiest."_ Relieved, Axel could have leapt for joy. He did _not_ want a repeat of… The Diner Incident. Instead, he wrapped his arm around the boy's shoulders, pulling him close and pressing a kiss to the top of his head. His mom fought a smile as she caught them, and for the first time Axel realized how strange this was, being unafraid of being this way with Roxas in front of people. In front of his parents. Proud to have him and be with him and completely unembarrassed, not just getting to show his classmates the piece of ass he was getting. "Sorry," Roxas murmured, suddenly. "Tired." Axel looked around the booth, as though he wanted to be reassured that he hadn't imagined the sound.

He let go of Roxas so he could sign, " _Totally fine. You'll feel better after you eat."_

" _Yeah, I think you're right."_ When Roxas turned to face forward again, Axel's mother hesitantly spoke.

"Roxas, where are you from?" she asked, a little slowly. Roxas stopped. He wasn't sure if he should try to speak or not, wasn't really sure if he wanted to make Axel translate for him. For the first time, Roxas felt like a little bit of a burden. A weird sense of guilt tugged at his stomach, and for the first time in his life he thought that maybe, for once, just for ten minutes, he'd like to be-

Axel watched Roxas deliberating, not sure whether or not to jump in. Roxas was great at lip reading, did he not understand her or was something wrong? For a moment he considered signing the question to Roxas, but he instead found himself saying, "It's harder for him to understand when you talk slowly. Just be natural, he'll most likely know what you mean."

"Oh!" his mom said, still looking a little unsure. It looked as though she was preparing to ask again when Roxas finally answered.

" _Sorry. I'm local. I grew up just in the outskirts_ _of Twilight Town, by where the clock tower is. I'm closer to the school now to make commuting easier."_ Feeling a bit self-conscious, Axel relayed the information back to his parents. He suddenly gained a whole new respect for Olette; this wasn't going to be as easy as he thought. It was like he had a mind for sign language and a mind for spoken word, and occasionally the two didn't want to meet. He was sure he'd forget a word or pick a weird one at some point. And Olette could speak, read, and translate all at once. The girl was crazy practiced.

"That's funny, we used to take Lea up there to go to the beach when he was little."

"Mom _._ "

"Sorry," she added. "Axel. Sorry. I told you I'd never remember to call you by the right name. Sorry Axel." Axel almost sighed, but kept it to himself. Right.

"So," His dad jumped in. Axel cringed. Not that he didn't love his dad, but the man had a way of putting his big foot in his equally big mouth. He prayed that he wouldn't say something stupid about Roxas' deafness. "How did you meet?"

Whew. That was an easy one. Maybe he sensed the awkwardness from that little slip up.

"He sat behind me in English last term… his friend got sick of translating for me so I learned sign." He somewhat hoped his dad wouldn't pry any further as his mom made a jab about how _her son_ learned a new language for a boy yet _her husband_ wouldn't even call her back while they were dating.

Okay. A little unnecessary, but it made Roxas smile.

The waiter came not a moment too soon; Axel was thirsty, Roxas was losing patience, and his dad's stomach sounded like a particularly nasty bear attack. He asked for their drinks and left.

Tease.

Fortunately, the worst of the crowd seemed to be, for the most part, finishing up; in a few moments the drinks were brought out and complimentary apology bread was set on the table (Axel sat back and let Roxas at it, he didn't want to get his fingers bitten off). Besides, he wasn't really all that hungry to begin with. Too many nerves. He was perfectly content sipping at his coke.

From there, the night was able to get rolling again. The waiter was coming back, and Axel decided to go ahead and order for everyone just to make sure he was being fair; though, frankly, he thought Roxas got a lot more touchy when he was with Hayner.

While finally waiting for their food to cook, Roxas decided to be a little bold; he nudged Axel and asked, to Axel's parents, " _How did you meet?"_

Ugh, what a suck up. Axel hoped that Roxas was prepared for a story. A long, boring story. He slid down in his seat and watched Roxas watch his mother, prepared to fill in at any time. Honestly, he'd heard this story more times than he could count. It was raining, they were waiting at the bus stop, she forgot her umbrella, he gave her his… ughhh. It made him want to gag. He was glad when their food arrived, halting the conversation and putting Axel out of his embarrassing-parents-giving-too-much-information-waaay-too-much-information-induced misery. It helped that he was finally hungry.

Axel and Roxas all but tore into their food, the redhead's parents practicing only a little more restraint.

All in all, the night went really smoothly, his parents liked Roxas-he knew they would-and Roxas really seemed to like his parents. So that was good. More than good, really. Still, the drive home lead all sorts of questions to pop in his head. They'd been officially together for… what? Two months, three? They'd been living together for almost that entire time, Roxas met his family… now what?

Would he have to meet Roxas's family too, and then what? What would that mean? Did he start saving up to move out on his own to try and find work with a little more flexibility or did he drag Roxas along with him? Were they supposed to break up? Roxas still had a few more years of school to go, then what? What was going to happen to them?

The two of them sat at what seemed to be the world's longest red light, watching the never ending stream of cars pass in front of them. Axel sighed and sat back, crossing his arms and debating whether or not to put the car in park. His brake-foot was falling asleep.

He felt a hand snake over his thigh. "Roxas?" A little pressure. Another hand, on his face this time, and warm lips on his.

This was a little inappropriate.

  
This was more than a little inappropriate.

He glanced up at the light. Still red. The road was pretty empty, it was getting dark… Axel opened his legs, Roxas quickly unbuckled his seat belt and went straight for Axel's fly. Axel gasped; it was hard to focus, remembering to keep his foot pressed against the brake so he wouldn't hit the guy in front of them, trying to keep an eye out so they couldn't get in trouble for this, feeling Roxas's breath against his neck as the blond kissed and sucked his neck, hands wandering, Axel somehow finding the state of mind to wonder what the hell had gotten into his boyfriend…

A car horn snapped them both out of it.

Loudly.

Axel jumped and swore, pushing Roxas back to his seat; Roxas hit his head on the steering wheel and made an unhappy noise. He buckled again as Axel zipped his fly and quickly tore off.

 _That_ was bizarre.

They made it home in ten minutes, Axel still obnoxiously half-hard the entire drive and wondering what the hell that was about. Not that he minded. If there was one thing that he loved about Roxas-besides the boy's tendency to piss him off then make him laugh, his brash attitude, his ahead-of-his-years thoughtfulness… well, besides all _that_ , Axel loved that Roxas was fucking fearless in the sack.

And apparently the car, too.

Maybe it just took some time to get Roxas past his initial reservations, maybe Axel had been imagining or exaggerating some of Roxas's tendencies to be slightly closed-off, but _damn_ the kid was bold when he got down to it.

They hardly stepped into the door when Roxas was on him again. Trying to shut the door as Roxas pushed him against the entry wall wasn't exactly an easy feat; trying to keep his thoughts in the realm of coherency while Roxas was again going for the fly of his jeans was even harder.

And, well… speaking of hard.

Axel brought their lips together in a hasty, messy kiss and took Roxas' wrist, leading the boy's touch lower… lower… stopping only once the goal had been reached. Roxas knew where to take it from there; he couldn't help but squirm a little under the boy's grip. Roxas was one of the few people Axel had ever let do this-it made him feel vulnerable-and _damn_ if the kid wasn't amazing at it. Roxas pressed one last kiss to Axel's mouth before lowering himself to his knees. Hardly prepared, Axel grabbed onto whatever he could for leverage-which ended up being the corner of the kitchen counter and Roxas' hair. He closed his eyes, breathing in deep. Shit, where did Roxas learn how to do _that…_

Axel arched his back, sighing again; the feeling of the mouth on him, so _warm_ , was incredible… and really, he thought, that it was Roxas' was just the icing on the cake.

They only just barely made it into the bedroom, stumbling over shed clothes and their own legs, landing in a clinch on the bed.

Roxas writhed underneath Axel; Axel reached out, blindly stroking, petting, pinching every inch of skin he found. Roxas gasped as Axel's hands found his belt, tugging it loose and sliding Roxas's dress pants down his legs until the blond could kick them off.

Axel moved them both up toward the top of the bed and threw out his arm, trying to locate the lubricant that he was sure they'd left out on the bedside table, just in case…

_Ah!_

There it was, hiding just out of sight, behind the desk lamp. Good-he'd have been really irritated if he had to get up to find it, especially since he'd gotten so comfortable, one leg stretched over Roxas' hip, Roxas on his side, kissing Axel's chest up and down. Axel slicked his fingers up and reached into his lover's boxer shorts, feeling every inch of skin before finding where he wanted to be. Roxas sighed and shuddered, moving Axel's leg away and moving his own to allow the redhead easier access. Axel's finger found its target, circling it for a moment, teasing the blond, before pressing in. Roxas moaned loudly.

That, Axel thought to himself, was something he loved about Roxas. There was no self-consciousness; Axel'd had partners who would close up and refuse to make a sound. True, Roxas had no real, tangible sense of loudness, but even less of a sense for modesty. Censorship wasn't necessary.

Then, it was quiet. Roxas was breathing soft next to Axel, deep in sleep. Dreaming. Axel watched for a moment, the twitches, the ticks, the sighs. The rise and fall of Roxas' pale chest. Axel cuddled down into the covers and closed his eyes, preparing to descend into a long, merciful rest.

…Okay. He couldn't quite keep his eyes shut. And he couldn't get comfortable, either. No big deal; he'd had a lot of caffeine earlier, and it'd been a big day. He was still buzzing a little. Fine. He nuzzled his face into the crook of Roxas' neck, smiling and breathing in deep. Roxas' natural smell was amazing, before sex and after.

He closed his eyes, smiling faintly and letting himself calm, enjoy the moment, and just let himself be, to do nothing more than _exist…_

Nope. Still nothing.

And of course Roxas hated Nyquil and wouldn't pass for 21 in a million years, dashing his chances of having any alcohol in the house, so his two best bets for forcing sleep were shot to hell.

Hm. To-do list: buy vodka. Lots and lots of vodka.

Axel tossed, turned, and tossed some more, until it finally looked like he was disturbing his boyfriend's sleep. Shit, he really didn't want to wake Roxas-he'd been nervous all day and exhausted by dinner, and he needed his rest. Plus, Roxas got nasty when tired.

Finally, Axel rose from his place in bed, as carefully as possible, and put his feet on the floor. He slowly rose, dressed, and slid on a pair of shoes. He left a note on the table ("Out for a walk, zombie. 2am. Will be back before 3. -A"), pressed a kiss against his boyfriend's cheek, stroking his hair once, and worked his way out the front door.

Axel took a deep breath. The night air felt incredible and the big full moon lit up the clean sidewalks, giving Axel more than enough light to see where he was going. Always a plus. He really had to appreciate how safe and tight-knit Roxas' neighborhood was; there was no way he'd be able to do this were he still in his old apartment, deeper in the city-well, not undisturbed by drunks or wannabe gangsters, at any rate. His mind briefly flickered to Zexion, then it was gone, off somewhere else.

Axel stopped.

Not five feet away stood a figure, tall and a little sinister, leaning against a gleaming black vehicle.

"…Saix?" Axel called. In the neighborhood's silence his voice seemed extra loud, even if he hadn't really raised his voice.

The figure looked up.

Of course it was Saix. There had been no doubt. The too, too bright moonlight cast a shadow on Axel's mind, taking him back to a different time, a different place. A different fight. Unconsciously Axel balled his hands into fists.

"What brings you all the way out here at this hour, Isa?" Saix's eyes narrowed at the name. Yeah, maybe Axel was shit-stirring. He didn't care. This was _his_ home, dammit. His neighborhood, his life, his day. Saix had been intruding more and more ever since they bumped into each other initially and it got Axel defensive. He felt like his toes were being stepped on, and he didn't like it. His territory was being threatened by this stranger's presence.

Saix said nothing, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He held it out and dropped his arm just as abruptly when Axel didn't move. With it, his neutral expression dropped into his trademark frown. Saix tossed the pack through his Lexus LS 460's open window and lit up. He pulled his hair from underneath his jacket and flipped it over his shoulder, then shook his head lightly until the last of the long blue strands fell down his back.

"Well?" Axel pressed.

"Making a peace offering," Saix said to Axel's bemusement, taking a drag and glancing back into the car's passenger seat. "Would you like to go out for a drive?"

"…Not really." Axel shoved his hands into his pockets. He felt cold, suddenly, and rubbed his arms almost possessively. He heard jangling, and looked up.

Something metal flew toward him and Axel's instinct to flinch was thankfully, face-savingly overridden by his impeccably quick reflexes.

"Yes you do."

Axel looked down at his hand, to the keys he'd caught without even thinking about it.

Yeah, Saix was right. He really wanted to do it. He _really_ wanted to.

But he couldn't run off in the middle of the night and risk Roxas waking up and wondering why it was 4, 5, 6, and he hadn't returned. He couldn't bring himself to hang around someone who would say anything against Roxas. 

This was it. He was an adult and he had to make the right decision.

He finally felt it.

"No, man. Sorry." He stole a glance at his cupped hand again, at the glittering silver.

He tossed it back, watching as the key flew into the air, arcing and landing in a heap at Saix's feet.

"Nice catch."

Even in at their distance, Axel could see the glare, could hear the unvoiced snarl as Saix dropped to one knee to pick up his key.

Axel resented Saix's ability to still appear cool and calculating after doing something so dorky.

"-That's a shame." Axel's best friend-former best friend- stated. "I suppose you've made your choice, then. I should have known that you would let this happen to yourself."

Axel was almost tempted to ask _what_ , but there was no way in hell he was taking the bait.

It looked like he wouldn't need to.

"Your lack of ambition and inability to follow through to see even the simplest plan to its end would lead you to merely settling. Yet somehow I expected better from you."

"Becoming a better person isn't _settling,_ Saix _."_

He'd almost said Isa but thought better of it. Besides, this man was not Isa. Not anymore. Isa would have laughed, at least. But Saix simply glowered, not even moving. Calling Saix his old name harkened to a time when he acted human. Referring to him as Isa wasn't an insult, when he thought about it. It was compliment.

"It's your boyfriend, isn't it?"

"What's my boyfriend?" Axel asked, exasperated, though a part of him already knew. Leave it to Saix to think that he wasn't capable of change, wasn't smart enough to adapt, without someone else's help or influence. Saix should have known better than anyone that Axel always had an agenda, apart from Saix, something that was his alone. Finally, Saix smiled. Axel wished he hadn't.

"I should have known," Saix continued. "That you would fall so far. But who would have known that you like them disabled and half your age?"

That was it.

Fuck restraint.

Saix was still smiling with this smug sense of self-satisfaction when Axel stormed over and landed the first punch.

Good. That wiped that fucking look off his stupid face. Breathing hard, Axel grabbed Saix's shirt, clutching the dark fabric in white-knuckled hands.

"You don't get _anything_ , you _fuck_ -"

"Axel," Infuriatingly calm. Bored. "Let _go_ of me."

In response Axel pulled him forward and slammed him into his pretty black Lexus.

Bad move.

Axel registered Saix's hands over his, short nails digging into Axel's fists. He was flat on his ass the next thing he knew. Saix swung his leg, and the steel toe of his boot made painful contact with Axel's side. _Shit_ , that wasn't just for show. Leave it to Saix to literally kick him while he was down. With one wrenching gasp Axel rolled onto his side, wincing as he rose to his feet, longing to return the favor. Again he grabbed his former friend in an attempt to throw him down and Saix stumbled, catching himself long enough to shove Axel back before regaining balance. It wasn't until Axel landed his second punch that they both stepped it up a notch.

Really. Fuck restraint.

Axel lost track of how many hits he'd landed, how many Saix had landed on _him_. He couldn't feel anything but the anger running white hot through his veins, didn't care if he was bruised, bleeding, knocked down or getting up or…

They stopped as suddenly as they started.

Saix had ceased moving and, slowly, Axel let go. The ex-friends stared wordlessly at one another, sore and aching, panting and struggling for breath as though they'd just made love. Somehow Axel found that he could do nothing but wonder how the hell this had happened. He lowered his fist.

Once he caught his breath he opened his mouth to speak but his words caught in his throat when he saw what had made Saix flip a complete 180, from madman to impenetrable jerkass.

A cop car.

Axel wasn't quite sure if Saix had called the emergency number at one point just to trip him up, or if a neighbor noticed a disturbance. He didn't know if police had just been patrolling and Axel'd picked a bad place to get into an all-out brawl.

All he knew was that he was the one being loaded into the now-lit up car, not Saix.

And that he was totally fucked.


	11. Plans and Pains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Axel is forced to reevaluate his future--and his relationship with Roxas.

Police cars, Axel now knew, were both stuffy and smelly. Probably from the vomit of about a dozen different rowdy drunks.

Well, so much for a relaxing walk.

At least he'd finally gotten tired-part of him wanted nothing more than to curl up and take a nap. After all, there was no point in letting himself get all worked up in a tizzy over this. He got into a fight with the wrong guy. Big deal. These things happened. All that mattered to him at the moment was that he felt incredibly lethargic, a little numb, even. Going from serene to furious to terrified in a space of only a few minutes had taken its toll on him. Now there was nothing he could do, so why stress about it?

He let his eyes droop shut and his posture slacken. Then it hit him.

Roxas.

He jolted up as though from a nightmare, earning a derisive comment from the man in the front passenger seat. Axel thought that telling him to fuck himself may not be his best plan if he wanted to be released anytime soon. Actually, if he could get home before 8am that would be fantastic. He was prepared to kiss some serious ass if he had to; Axel wasn't above that if it'd get him what he wanted.

God, Roxas was going to be _so_ pissed off. That was his one worry. Axel sighed heavily as the car came to a halt.

Wonderful.

He'd have to wake Roxas. It was 4:30 in the morning, they'd been up doing it all night and now he'd have to wake the kid up to tell him that he stupidly got into a fight and could he please come and bail him out?

Roxas would have to get dressed and limp over to the car and drive for a half hour and it was too damn early and… augh, _fuck_.

"Hey," Axel asked to one of the cops hoisting him out the car. She grunted in response. "I get a call right? I can call my boyfriend to let him know where I am, right?" Both officers exchanged looks and shrugged.

He assumed that was a yes.

They took him into the station and into a small room. If anything, at least he considered himself lucky for being the only idiot out that night, so he didn't have to share his cell with anyone else.

To be completely fair, he was just surprised it took him this long to get thrown into jail.

And really, it wasn't _so_ bad. At least he was alone, he didn't have anyone unruly or cruel to contend with and could just sit and stew in his misery.

God, Roxas was going to kill him.

Axel pulled his cell from his pocket for only a second before a cop was on his ass. "Use our phone." He said.

Awesome, it was 4am, he was incarcerated, and he wasn't allowed to use his perfectly good cell phone. It took him a few tries to get it through to them that _yes_ , his boyfriend was deaf. _No_ he couldn't use their landline, he needed to be able to text him because _no_ there was no way that calling him would do anything and yeah he _kind of_ wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

Begrudgingly they gave him back his phone; Axel instantly began his message. Okay, so that hadn't exactly earned him any friends. And worse came to worst he was probably only there for the night but that didn't solve the pressing threat of Roxas breaking up with him.

It took three texts before Roxas stirred.

_Roxas?_ Axel tried. _Roxas. ROXAS._

_What? Where are you?_ Came the blond's response a few minutes later.

_Oh you know. The police office. nbd_

A pause. _WHAT DID YOU DO?_

Axel flinched, feeling worse than ever. It didn't help that, with the adrenaline wearing off, his bruises were starting to hurt. Shit, Saix really did a number on him… He could only hope that the jerk was hurting as much, but at the same time he figured that Saix's smug sense of superiority probably served as a painkiller on its own.

_So can you come get me?_ Axel let the message sit for a moment before hitting send. The response was instant.

_I kinda don't want to. Be there in an hour._

Axel sighed. _Yeah I wouldn't want to either. Love you._

No response.

It was four-thirty in the morning when Roxas arrived and Axel, meanwhile, had resigned himself to curling up and trying to get at least a little sleep.

Axel found that he dreaded Roxas's arrival almost more than the idea of being stuck in his cell for another six hours.

Not that Roxas was particularly scary or anything-well, maybe when sleep deprived and/or hungry-but he wasn't looking forward to the confrontation. He fucked up, and he knew it. And Roxas had yelled at him before. Being yelled at in sign language is _not_ fun.

But even more than that, he was angry at himself. No one could be more upset, more disappointed with Axel than he was with himself. He'd been kicking himself for nearly an hour and his annoyance hadn't faded.

He thought he was better than that.

He just…

He thought he was better than that.

He stirred to the sound of his cage door sliding open and, a moment later, the sight of a short blond boy.

" _Come with me,"_ he said seriously.

" _You all right?_ " Axel asked. He didn't know why that was the first thing to spring into mind. " _Look… I'm sorry._ " Axel said earnestly as they loaded into the car.

" _We'll talk in the morning,"_ Roxas responded, wiping his eyes after a loud yawn.

" _Actually, it is the morning."_

" _Smartass."_

Roxas yawned again as he pushed the keys into the ignition. He wiped his eyes and blinked hard before pressing his head against the steering wheel. He sighed heavily, then sat up. " _Okay. Let's go."_

"Hey," Axel murmured, tapping Roxas' shoulder. " _I'm super awake now. Want me to drive?"_

" _No,_ " Roxas said without turning to look at his redheaded boyfriend. Axel winced a little. Okay. No eye contact, then. Awesome.

Roxas started up the engine. It was nearly silent in the early morning traffic. Soon a gentle stream of warm air filled the car, and they were off. Axel stared blankly at the AC and central heating dial, turned as always to medium-hot. Even on warm days Roxas had the heat going. It made Axel drowsy, especially this morning, with the car's insulation blocking out almost all sound. The way the ride was smooth, even over potholes or speed bumps… it all made him want to curl up and nod off. He thought back to the diner incident-he actually had fallen asleep then, hadn't he? Back when he'd been super stoked about this relationship.

He jolted awake.

Whoa. Hold up. What did he just let himself think?

He stole a glance at Roxas.

Okay, so he was a little tired of feeling like he was always seconds away from getting in trouble.

He sighed heavily.

He was a little tired, period.

It seemed as though it took them twice as long to get home as it should have. Somehow it'd taken them an hour and a half to get home-with no traffic and no red lights, to boot. Fucking bizarre.

Axel was more than happy to throw the front door open and step inside his home. It felt like he'd been gone for weeks-and it was good to be back. He turned to Roxas, shooting him a sheepish grin.

" _Man, I'm beat."_

Roxas scanned Axel's face, littered with spots of black and blue and caked in freshly dried blood. " _Obviously."_

Axel's grin faded and he averted his eyes. Just barely he caught the sound of his boyfriend's socked feet on the thick plush carpet. He pretended not to and turned his head while pushing his hands into his pockets. _I don't want to talk_ , this look said. He didn't look back up until Roxas placed a surprisingly gentle hand on his shoulder.

" _I'm tired,"_ said Roxas. " _Let's go to bed. We'll talk and get you cleaned up later. Kay?"_

Exhaustion, pure and heavy, suddenly hit Axel full force and he found that all he could do was nod and sleepily follow Roxas into their bedroom. He glanced out the window as he and Roxas shuffled across the hall. The sun had risen.

Sometime after noon Axel blinked open his bleary green eyes. He was still sore, still a little sleepy. Looking to his side he noticed that Roxas was still sleeping. Not facing him.

Axel sat up, sighing, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He'd resigned himself to sleeping on the wet spot and got an awful night of sleep besides. Well, morning of sleep. Whatever.

He sat up for a moment, thinking, before deciding to crawl back under the covers. Roxas didn't look like he was ready to re-join the world of the living yet, so why should he?

After twenty minutes or so of half-conscious dreaming, Axel registered what felt like a firm grip on his shoulder and jolted up with a loud, "Huh?"

He blinked hard, brushing his hair back from his face.

Nope.

Roxas hadn't budged, still sound asleep on the edge of the bed.

Well, it looked like whatever rogue god that had placed the world's brightest streetlamp outside the window at his old place and raised the price of bagels had moved on to ensuring that Axel never received a full night's sleep again.

Well, morning. Whatever.

Slowly Axel inched toward Roxas, gently sliding his arms around the blond's shoulders, and curling up. Roxas had little patience for post-sex cuddling most nights; he fidgeted or wanted to sleep or go again. Funny, because Axel could've held onto him forever. So these moments, these calm moments, were a blessing. And Axel was still waiting for the fallout from the night before, which he guessed would be happening any second now. Yeah, this was nice. For now it was good, it was all Axel really wanted after everything that happened in the last few hours.

For the first time in a day, Axel slept in peace.

His dreams were vague and fuzzy, and upon waking he wouldn't remember a single one of them. He vaguely recalled, at some point, a particular weight on the bed lifting and leaving, and then his body delved even deeper into sleep, cutting off any ties with the outside world, until he woke with a start. Surprisingly, Roxas had let him sleep in. Axel had been almost sure that Roxas would want answers sooner rather than later.

He rose once again at 2pm, still sore, still aching, but feeling all-around better nonetheless. He stood, stretched, wincing a little, and wandered into the kitchen. There he found Roxas, sitting cross-legged on the couch, a bowl of cereal in his lap and half a sandwich in his mouth. He was dividing his attention between his phone, the TV, and a magazine on the table.

Was he chewing angrily or was that just Axel's imagination?

Carefully he treaded over to the light switch on the other side of the room. He flicked it once, twice, three times before Roxas looked up, glancing around him before locating his boyfriend. For a moment they both stood, staring at each other, not making a sound. The TV blared in the background.

Roxas took a bite of his sandwich.

" _Do I want to know what happened?"_ he asked.

"Sorry," Axel muttered in vain before walking over to take a seat next to Roxas. Roxas didn't budge, meaning Axel had to squeeze in to fit. Roxas could take up a hell of a lot of room when he wanted to. " _I fucked up,"_ he stated simply. " _I went for a walk when I couldn't fall asleep and… I sort of got into a fight."_ The baffled look on Roxas' face would have been delicious had the situation been different.

" _At 3AM?_ _With who? A hobo?"_

Axel's mouth gave a little twitch. " _Not exactly. I ran into Saix."_

"… _That's really unlikely."_ Axel paused to think about it.

" _It was kind of a contrived coincidence,"_ he mused. " _But that's beside the point."_ Roxas sighed heavily. " _Hey. I love you?"_

" _Just keep going."_ Ouch.

" _I ran into Saix and he said. Some…things."_

" _About me,"_ Roxas guessed. Axel nodded. " _Man, what's his problem?"_ Axel opened his mouth to speak, unsure what off he was to say in the first place. He closed his mouth, slumped over, and shrugged.

" _…I don't know. I think he just wanted to get to me. I don't think he cared what he was saying as long as it pissed me off. "_

" _I don't know what your history with him was really like. I get that I don't get it. Does that make sense?"_

" _Nope."_

Now Roxas shrugged.

" _Thanks for standing up for me. But I'm still mad at you."_

" _Yeah. I understand."_

Roxas took the last bite of his sandwich, looking thoughtful; for not the first time, Axel wished he could get inside his boyfriend's head, see what he was really thinking.

_"There's leftovers in the fridge if you're hungry. You should clean up... You look kinda gross."_ Axel's reaction was some sort of odd marriage of a grin and a wince. He reached out to give Roxas' shoulder a gentle squeeze but thought better of it, and left. The walk to the bathroom was short but agonizing, and to Axel it felt as though every step had been a mile. Really, all he wanted to do was crawl into bed and go back to sleep. Somehow the lack of an argument with Roxas had been worse than what he'd been expecting, if only for the lack of a good make-up he was hoping for after the explosion.

He quickly undressed, grabbed a towel from the small cabinet over the toilet, and turned on the tap.

And for some reason, he really wanted a bagel.

Weird.

He crossed his arms, letting the hot water pelt his back. Well, really it felt more like it was _punching_ him in the back, since he was still unbelievably stiff. Wincing slightly, Axel thought, _To do list. Fix water pressure,_ knowing that he wasn't going to get around to it. Well, at least he'd gotten some of the things on his to-do list done since he moved in. A few weeks ago he'd fixed Roxas' doorbell so that the light flickered when ringing. He'd even put up a small sign over the door. _Deaf resident. Ring doorbell._ Roxas hadn't been thrilled with the sign, said it was an invitation to be robbed, but it'd done the job.

Axel sighed and closed his eyes, willing himself not to doze.

What he wanted, suddenly, was for Roxas to hop in with him as he sometimes did. Axel would pull him over and wrap his arms around the man, nuzzling his face into the boy's hair as it became wet and dark and hung around his face. He'd let his hands wander down Roxas' back, feeling him until he heard that familiar hitch of breath. Pushing him against the wall and….

Actually, at this time, it was easier to think about other things. School, maybe.

It was then that the realization hit him in the face: Roxas was right.

Axel wasn't going to be able to make a living with his degree. He didn't want to write and didn't want to teach—and that didn't leave him a whole lot of options. And even if he did find something to do higher up in that game store chain, the thought of working there for much longer made something in his stomach twist. But he loved cars. Loved working with them and driving them and looking at them. That was what he wanted to do-it was all he wanted to do.

He needed to go back to school.

He'd check his savings in the morning, talk to his parents. He needed to get his shit together. Heavily, Axel sighed.

Roxas, once again, was right.

How annoying.

Axel washed the shampoo from his hair, watching the suds circle down the drain.

Suddenly he was hit with a strong wave of regret. For everything. For everything he was and had been, for wasting four years of his life and thousands of dollars on a useless degree, for getting into this situation. For meeting Roxas.

Something that had seemed like so much fun at the beginning was suddenly making him feel like shit, and he couldn't figure out why.

He thought that it took _this_ happening to really make him see what was going on. He loved Roxas. He _loved_ Roxas. But now it was time to let him go.

If feeling like this meant hurting like this, meant seeing himself this way, maybe it'd be better if he went back to fucking and leaving. After all, he could stave off being an actual person for a couple more years before it just got kinda sad. And then maybe it wouldn't be so painful when he had to leave.

Well, that'd done it; Axel had successfully made himself incredibly depressed. It was definitely time to get out of the shower.

Admittedly, seeing Roxas' face as he stepped into the hall had done a lot to reassure him, like maybe he was just freaking out over nothing. This was his first real relationship in…well… actually, he guessed this was his first real relationship, and he was starting to figure out one thing: he had no fucking idea what he was doing. That much was obvious. He reminded himself that he couldn't let one minor setback, one unspoken fight ruin everything for him. He also needed to start looking for vocational schools. That really needed to be the number one thing on his to-do list.

He ruffled his boyfriend's hair as he passed by, walking into their room and locating Roxas' laptop. He plugged it into the outlet next to the desk and carried It over to their bed. It had been in sleep mode—Roxas sucked at remembering to turn it off—and started up within seconds.

Okay. This was it.

He quickly brought up Roxas' search engine homepage, punched in his zip code and the phrase "automotive schools" and began researching.

He instantly came to two conclusions: if he had done this in the first place, his life would have been a hell of a lot easier. Second, he was absolutely fucking doing this.

Still, there was a snag. Even though he lived in a relatively big city, the nearest of the schools was still almost an hour commute away, and the best would be taking him across the country. He'd briefly thought on it before, but now it was time to get serious. There was no way he could uproot Roxas. The kid was going to be a junior, had two years ahead of him, an established community, and a bitchin' house. Even if Axel wanted to ask Roxas to leave all that behind, he wouldn't. And maybe it'd be better if they spent a little time apart. It was becoming clear to Axel—and maybe Roxas too—that he was starting to get a little claustrophobic, and he had no fucking idea what had started it. Maybe a little distance for a year or two would be a good thing.

Yeah. They were going to need to _talk_ soon. Axel was already kind of dreading the conversation.

He shut off the computer and slowly made his way out to the living room, scanning the couch for Roxas. Just as Axel was ready to turn back into their room he emerged from the kitchen, icepack In hand. He granted Axel a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes before taking a seat, patting the space next to him. Hesitantly, Axel walked over and sat. Roxas motioned for him to turn around, so Axel swung his legs over the couch and shifted until they were facing each other, both with legs crossed. Axel, embarrassingly, flinched when Roxas reached out, then winced as the coldness hit his face. Instinctively he reached up to push Roxas away, but Roxas stopped him, gently using his free hand to press Axel's down. Taking a deep breath, Axel resigned himself to the boy's touch. It wasn't hard to sink into.

Roxas kept the ice pressed to Axel's black eye as he moved his other hand to stroke the redhead's jaw with his thumb. He unexpectedly moved in, pressing his lips against a clear, untarnished spot on Axel's face, leaving it there for a moment. It wasn't a real kiss, not really. Just a simple, affectionate gesture that soothed the pounding in Axel's head and chest.

Okay. Maybe he'd been overreacting.

Or not.

God, he couldn't even figure himself out anymore.

" _I've been thinking about what you said,"_ Axel said some time later.

" _About you being an idiot, or what?"_ Axel grinned despite himself and reached over, ruffling Roxas' hair again. Roxas snorted and shoved him lightly. Feeling like a complete wuss, Axel winced.

" _Hey. Easy now."_ Roxas's smile faded instantly.

" _Sorry."_ Axel shrugged, looking away. A minute passed, then two. Then they both looked up, back at each other, almost at once.

" _I was looking up some possible grad schools. There's a pretty good one up north and… it looks like it'd be a great fit for me. It's expensive as hell but I think I could manage it."_

" _And until then?"_

" _I teach,"_ Axel said, after a long pause. He almost surprised himself. " _Might as well put my degree to use somehow. But…"_

" _You'd be moving."_

" _Yep."_

_"Probably far away."_

" _Bingo."_

Another pause forced itself into the conversation; a silence which seemed to last an hour, to say everything and nothing, absolutely nothing at all. For lack of any better idea, Axel pulled his boyfriend into a long, needy embrace. This was going to be hard.

This was going to be very, very hard.


	12. Time Gained and Time Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two years can pass in the blink of an eye.

August rolled by before either of the boys truly realized it. Before they even had time to process it, Axel was packing, Axel was boarding a plane, Axel was gone. He'd miraculously charmed his way into an inner city high school teaching position at a summer program and even if he didn't love it, and he didn't expect to, it paid marginally better than cashiering at a video game store. He'd found a small circle of friends, he'd gotten into contact with some nearby family, he had a community, he was starting school (again) in spring.

There was one little piece missing—one little, blond piece.

They wrote to each other. Not frequently, but enough. They'd attempted to video chat, but it was hard to sign with Axel's slow, secondhand laptop deciding to make his webcam as jumpy as possible. Plus, and he'd never want to admit it, but… seeing Roxas's face, and everything he'd left behind in it, was gut-wrenchingly hard. Axel knew he loved Roxas, but he was finally beginning to understand the emotional severity of what it meant to be completely, irrevocably connected.

At least Roxas seemed to be doing okay for himself. Seemed happy, seemed healthy, seemed proud.

Slowly, winter began to show itself, and Axel saw his first white Christmas. Meanwhile, Roxas was enjoying the sun's warmth throughout the holidays. He welcomed spring, anxious for winter to melt away and bring about the changes he'd been needing.

As classes picked up, Axel got a different job-retail again- and a nice internship. He loved every second of school; he could say that for the first time in his life. He loved the work and the teachers, and being surrounded by people with his thoughts, his interests.

Lying awake at night, Axel would think that he'd have to thank Roxas someday.

The aching for his boyfriend dulled, and ceased. Axel found himself a new club and new boys, though he never dated another. While those first six months away from his lifelong home had seemed to last like no other, the following two years passed as though in a dream. Axel glanced down at his college sweatshirt every few minutes on his two hour flight, savoring the proof that this had all happened and ready to start his career.

But first he had some business to take care of back home.

His first stop was for his parents. That had to be done. They hadn't made his graduation, and he understood. They didn't have the means, and like hell Axel could afford to get them both over there when the reality of college bills were beginning to hit—again. He hadn't even seen Roxas' graduation.

Roxas' graduation… now _there_ was a strange thought. He wondered if the blond had gotten any taller, if Olette could still be found two steps behind him.

Axel's second trip was to Cid's auto shop. The job offer was inevitable; Axel knew that going in, but he still had to think it over, decide if he really wanted to go back home after his first taste of true independence had been so sweet.

He mulled it over as he dropped by his old convenience store. He was hungry and needed a cheap lunch and an energy drink. He had two days left at home, that he knew of. The pressure of time was closing in on him, and he needed to make up his mind and decide where the hell he was going to live.

Axel was walking to the checkout counter when it happened, when the real change of his little trip back home took place: a messy mass of blond hair caught his eye, and he perked up instantly.

"Roxas!" he said. Someone, some guy, next to him looked up. Axel could have face-palmed. What the hell was wrong with him? Why did he think Roxas would respond to that? Luckily the guy wasn't so dense and tapped Roxas' shoulder. It was then he realized that they must have been together.

Roxas looked up, the look on his face impossible to describe.

Axel, frankly, couldn't tell if that was a good or bad thing.

" _Axel?"_ Roxas asked, spelling each letter. It struck Axel as odd, but he felt too overwhelmingly rusty to realize why.

For once, Axel was at a loss for words. He couldn't think of a single thing to say—not a single thing.

Roxas's friend must have sensed the awkwardness, because he signed Roxas a quick excuse—something about wanting to go look at something in another aisle. Yeah, Axel was way rusty. He really should have kept up practicing while he was gone. Absently Roxas nodded and, never taking his eyes off his—former?—boyfriend, leaned into the kiss, planted firmly on the cheek by this new guy.

Oh.

They weren't together. They were _together_.

 _Oh_.

Roxas said something rapidly. Did Roxas always sign so fast? It was hard to keep up, especially when Axel's stunned brain felt like mush. For the first time in years, Axel found himself asking, " _Could you repeat that?"_

" _I wish you would've kept up your sign language,"_ Roxas said, the expression in his eyes still impenetrable.

I wish you would've waited for me, Axel wanted to say.

" _I missed you,"_ he said instead. He didn't know where it came from.

Finally, the icy bastard routine broke. Roxas rushed forward, as though to hug him, then stopped. The mere foot that separated them seemed like a mile.

" _I should find my boyfriend,_ " he said instead.

"… _Right."_ Well, that settled that, then. There was no way in hell Axel was staying in Twilight Town. He'd turn down Cid's offer, get in his car and just… drive. It was a little petty, but Axel hadn't realized how much his decision really needed to weigh on Roxas. He hadn't realized that two years hadn't caused his love to fade a single ounce.

But that was okay.

" _Wait,"_ Axel found himself saying. Roxas looked, possibly, vaguely hopeful. " _How's Olette?"_

" _She's good,"_ Roxas said after a confused moment. " _I'll tell her you say hi."_

" _That'd be good."_ They stared at each other for another strange moment. " _I should get going."_ He was starting to notice the cashier staring, at any rate. He was in line when he felt an unexpected tap on his shoulder. " _Roxas?"_

" _You should know,"_ Roxas signed, small and close to himself, as though afraid of being overheard. " _I'm not serious about this guy."_

" _What's that mean?"_

Roxas's answer was predictably smug and cryptic, and Axel found himself repeating it over and over that night.

" _Whatever you want it to mean."_


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eight months later...

Axel's students love it when Roxas drops in. He doesn't blame them. For one thing, it's a sure distraction from lecturing, for everyone involved. Second, it's good practice for the kids, who seem to have taken a strange sort of interest in actually learning sign. Axel admits it's more interesting than analyzing poetry. What's weird for him—really weird—is seeing all the same kids he knew back in high school. It makes him feel old. Hell, Roxas would tell him that he _is_ old.

He sees all the cocky rich kids, the Isas who are going to turn into Saixes, who would step on people and ruin people and never receive an ounce of comeuppance. He sees the outcasts and loners and little oddballs he used to pick on when he was their age. And he sees himself. That's probably the part of the job that he likes the least: it's seeing all the kids who are just so completely lost and latch onto anyone who will give them a sense of power, a sense of belonging, some sort of identity. He thinks some of them will just grow out of it. They're mostly sophomores—fifteen, sixteen. Plenty of time to grow up. But he also thinks some of them never will.

Of course, when he isn't waxing philosophical, Axel's train of thought is usually focused toward grading tests and papers. It's mindless work, but he doesn't mind it too much. He's still used to it from his short stint teaching his first year of grad school.

Roxas tends to sit in and be generally snarky before he has to get his own job. It's a decent set-up; he hangs back for an hour or so, they grab lunch together, Roxas leaves shortly into Axel's last class, which is also the last class of the day.

Today is Friday. Class lets out for lunch in twenty minutes, and Roxas quietly files in and takes a seat on an empty desk, pushed into a corner. The kids are finishing up some group projects, and at this point most of them are so used to the blonde's presence that only a few of them even look up.

Roxas says, " _It's chaos in here."_ Axel grins.

" _Gets me off the hook, though."_

Roxas smiles at that and lifts the plastic bag in his hand, showing Axel the logo printed on the cover. An unnecessary way of saying, _I got the food you asked for._ Axel shoots him a quick nod before snapping his fingers once then letting out a loud, "Hey! Time's up."

Roxas watches the rustling of the students, running every which way to arrange their desks back from their circles, some talking, some laughing, some looking deep in thought or just plain stoned. Ten minutes later they file out, some waving to him, others ignoring him. One particularly ambitious girl asks him how he's doing.

Then he and Axel are alone.

Roxas doesn't even remember jumping off the desk and striding to the front of the room, but suddenly he's been swept into Axel's arms and they're sharing a kiss, and he rests his head against his boyfriend's shoulder and breathes deep. Their time spent apart was hard; harder than he thought it would be. Even though they're almost a year together, sometimes the surprise of that initial longing still causes a strange, dull ache somewhere inside of him.

" _Two years to go, huh?"_ Roxas asks as they pull apart. He waits for Axel to respond as the redhead pulls the two Styrofoam containers from the bag and opens them. When he sees orange chicken he pushes it over to Roxas, then opens his own, and takes a mouthful.

" _Yup. Then I'm outta here."_

" _I'm happy for you,"_ Roxas says sincerely. He didn't take Axel's departure to grad school lightly; he wanted to see Axel doing something he loved, and that was the long and the short of it. He just guesses he didn't see himself as part of that picture. And that he was nineteen and stupid, wounded from an old relationship. This is a more honest try on his part.

" _Hell, I'm happy for US, you know? These stupid college bills might not actually kill us._ " Then, he shrugs. " _This isn't as bad as I thought it'd be, you know? But I'll be happy to finally be working with some fucking cars."_ Axel breaks into a grin, then laughter. " _How's everything going in the world of public relations?"_ Roxas snorts.

" _I feel like we have the same job right now, let's leave it at that."_ Still laughing, Axel reaches over to ruffle Roxas's hair. Roxas smiles and pushes him away, then pulls him in for a kiss.

"Um, I have a question about—oh." Axel looks up, and it takes Roxas a moment to figure out that they have company in the form of a mousy, dark-haired sophomore boy from his next class. There's a collective "oh shit" reaction among all three of them. "Oh, I, never mind, it can wait." He near-bolts to the door before, in a moment of courage, saying, "It's fine, we all pretty much figured…" his awkward sentence trails off, and he's out the door.

For a single, stunned moment all Axel and Roxas can do is stare at each other. Then they laugh, neither of them really noticing that their hands are joined, pointer fingers and thumbs looped and joined together, connected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so bad about responding individually, but thank you to everyone who left kudos and reviews--it really means a lot to me. Glad you enjoyed!!


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